UK online wine market worth £800 million

The UK online wine market is now worth £800 million accounting for 11% of total wine sales in the country, according to a Wine Intelligence report released yesterday.

25% of UK wine drinkers are now shopping for wine online

In 2005 Wine Intelligence estimated that the online wine market was worth around £170m in the UK, meaning that the sector has grown by 470% in the past 8 years – equating to a compound annual growth rate of 21%.

The company, which specialises in consumer research for the wine industry, said that much of the recent growth has come from consumers using supermarket home delivery services to order wine, as opposed to the more traditional direct-to-home wine specialists who generally sell wine by the case.

Indeed, as reported by db last week, Tesco has just broken an online sales record with wine sales through Tesco.com rising by as much as 51% during the last two weeks of November compared to the same period last year.

The Wine Intelligence report, called UK Consumer Behaviour in the Convenience and Direct-to-Home Channels, also noted that such is the growth of online grocers and the proliferation of handheld internet devices that 25% of UK wine drinkers are now shopping for wine online.

Commenting on the findings, Richard Halstead, COO of Wine Intelligence, said: “The online channel is growing in importance in the UK, and we can see that consumers are increasingly appreciating the ease of adding a few bottles of wine to a home delivery supermarket order.”

The report also covers consumer behaviour in the convenience and impulse channel in the UK, which is used by over 12 million adults for wine according to Wine Intelligence.

Here too the major supermarkets are making strong progress, with around two thirds of convenience store wine shoppers using Sainsbury’s Local or Tesco Express for their wine purchases in the past four weeks.

Halstead said, “It is also interesting to see how many consumers touch the convenience channel on a regular basis, and the opportunities for wine as well as other alcoholic beverages that this offers brand owners. I think the main message of the report is that these channels need to be understood better, as they are now shifting significant volumes.”

Meanwhile, according to the Retail Bulletin yesterday, UK online sales across all categories surpassed £10 billion in a single month for the first time in November.

The IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index grew 20% in November compared to the same month last year, and increased by 30% on October’s performance – the greatest monthly rise in 10 years.

The highest growth was recorded among multi-channel retailers, which grew year-on-year by 23% compared to 16% for online only brands.