The wine distribution systems over the world: an explorative survey

The scope of the presentation is to offer a comprehensive information set useful to support the development of international marketing strategies and to become a basis for further studies on wine distrbution. Nowaday the world wine market is characterised by a huge variety of different local situation in terms of how wine is consumed. Country by country is different the distribution (in value and in volume) of consumed wine between at home consumption, off-trade consumption, and consumption in licensed premises, on-trade consumption. Considering off-trade consumption, the role of different retailers in very different over the world. Certainly, considering that one of the most striking phenomena in the retailing scene is the consolidation, the role of supermarkets is increasing also in the wine market. Actually, large scale distribution in many developed countries trade about 70% of wine destined to home consumption and supermarkets have been responsible for the development of the wine industry in many countries. But in many countries the share of supermarkets is lower, for reasons due to the trade laws or the evolutionary paths of the market. As a result, different countries may be different for the role of high street chains and independent and specialist wine stores as well as web-based retailers. Of course, in analysing such aspects of the wine markets it is important to investigate not only the share in volume of the different retailers but also the share in value. Comparing the share in volume and the share in value it is possible to highlight phenomena of specialization toward specific supply segments. Each country has been characterised in terms of demand dimension, per-capita consumption, role of imports using the international data sources (FAO/OIV) and then have been collected figures (in volume and in valure) about place of consumption (on trade/off trade), share of different retailers. Qalitative information has been collected as well: presence and role of particular agencies (state monopolies, etc.), presence of main player in retailing or in the horeca system, particuar legal constraints or regulation concerning the wine trade. Collected data are used to compare the different national models and to draft few transnational models. The survey is carried out using the country reports produced by several public agencies (USDA in USA, ICEX in Spain, ICE in Italy etc.). Such sources has been integrated, when necessary, by information collected by local experts. Information coming from such different sources are not homogeneous and not always specific for wine. The research effort has been therefore focused on the reconcilation of data coming from different sources and on the identifying of pertinent to wine information. Supermarkets weight ranges from a minimum of 40% in volume (especially in Eastern Europe) up to 90% in countries like Danemrk and Netherland, demonstrating the preminent role of this outlet in many situation. The unit value of wine sold in the on-trade channel is regularly higher respect the off-trade and this means that the consumption on premise is genrally addressed to wines with higher price. Crossing data about place of consumpion and data about per-capita and total consumption among countries, it is possible note some important results. Firstly, for most of the considered countries, the on-trade consumption is much lower than the off-trade one, except in traditional producing countries of the old world of wine where the higher per consuption is observed: as a matter of fact, in Italy and France the on-trade weight is 70% in value (even if only 30% in volume) and in Portugal it is 60% in value, although it is very significant also the data of an emerging country like India (66%). Moreover, it is possible to note the special case of the UK, where the on-trade consumption weight of all alcoholic beverages is growing, due to new consumption behaviors (like binge drinking): it is 70%, of which half is for wine. Instead, the off-trade weight is much larger (especially in volume) in the USA and in the Eastern and Northern European countries, with values ranging between 70% and 90%.