Trends and implications for Spanish wine sales in the US market

Abstract

PurposeSpanish wine sales have grown quite rapidly in the US market during the past few years. The purpose of this paper is to examine this trend, discuss potential reasons, and identify opportunities for maintaining and increasing Spanish wine sales in the US market.Design/methodology/approachThe objectives are achieved by analyzing ACNielsen scan data from 2002 to 2005 and other secondary data on US wine consumers and trends.FindingsThe results indicate that Americans perceive red Spanish wine quite positively and are moving up in price point expenditures. However, sales of Spanish white wines remain rather fixed at specific price points. In addition, Spanish wine is losing market share to other imported wines, except for certain price points, but is performing well against US wines.Practical implicationsThis paper suggests ten opportunities for maintaining and/or increasing Spanish wine sales in the US market. Many of these suggestions are also useful for other countries desiring to export wine to the US.Originality/valueThis paper is one of the first of its kind to provide an in‐depth analysis of ACNielsen Scan data on Spanish wines sales in the USA. In addition, it provides extensive information on the US wine market, trends, and new market segments such as the Millennial and Hispanic markets.

Desperately seeking serendipity

“…vineyard, winemaking, marketing, strategy, finance, sales. Regarding market orientation, respondents were asked to rate the relative importance they gave to each price segment (Heijbroek, 2003) for their business now and in the future, the relevance of each customer segment (silent generation, baby boomers, Genx, millennials) and sales channel (winery sales, volume retailers, web sales, restaurant and specialised wine shops) both currently and in the future (Thach and Cuellar, 2007;Nowak and Newton, 2008). Respondents provided 2006 export sales (as a percentage of total wine sales) and estimated export sales for 2010.…”

Spanish wines in the US market: What attributes do US consumers look for in Spanish wines?

“…The sample (September, 2012), which included 9,260 references 3 , has been segmented by price 4 as some authors suggest (Angulo et al, 2000;Costanigro et al, 2007) and to determine if the different market share of Spanish wines in each category (ICEX, 2014) could affect the consumer valuation. Premium segments provide more possibilities for market penetration than lower price segments (Cholette & Castaldi, 2005;Thach & Cuellar, 2007). Three price categories were considered: popular premium (between US$ 3 and US$ 7 per bottle), super premium (between US$ 7 and US$ 14 per bottle) and ultra premium (over US$ 14 per bottle).…”

An Update: Is Globalization Continuing to Benefit American Wine Drinkers?

“…(For the period 1988-2005, replacing an Old World wine with a New World wine lowered the average real price by 1.0%, and with a New-New World wine by 2.4%) When we put these two sets of results together (the negative effect on the average real price by replacing a French wine with an Italian wine and the positive effect of replacing an Old World wine with a New-New World wine) with what has been reported about Spain, Portugal, and Italy, we started to think that perhaps the second decade of the globalization in wine markets (Anderson and Nelgen, 2011b) affected the Top 100 list in a different manner. The primary drivers that pushed prices down may have been heavy investment in technology, research, and human capital, benefits from European Union subsidies, higher controls on the quantity and quality of grapes, modernization of their wine-making processes, and the launching of aggressive marketing strategies in the United States (Martinez-Carrion and Medina-Albaladejo, 2010; Panzone and Simoes, 2009;Thach and Cuellar, 2007). Another consideration was presented by Anderson and Wittwer (2013), who have documented the effect of bilateral RER fluctuations on the source and prices of wines in the importing countries' markets.…”