Amazon Puts Wine Program on Hold - Wine Business News

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Comment by Laurence Davidson on December 15, 2009 at 10:07am

Amazon's failure to succeed in the online wine sales world is definitely not predicated upon the "evil" factor of wine (alcohol in general) at all but more to the fact that there are many psychological factors involved in the purchase of wine online. One of the biggest is illustrated by the following: I don't know a single person who buys wine online (and I literally know a large number of individuals who actively shop online for wine) that does not know exactly what they are looking for - and those wines are always the harder-to-obtain producers or vintage long since sold out from the retail shelves. So a big part of Amazons failure is that the wines that Amazon pulled into service are the same wines that can be easily purchased anywhere in the US that sells wine - 90% of the time as an adjunct to (and thus often an impulse purchase) general grocery shopping. How many wine consumers do you know that plan a special trip to go and get a bottle or case of Beringer, Mondavi, Sterling or Ravenswood? Now there is nothing wrong with these wines - they're solid, predictable performers in a sea of labels. Nor is the decision to purchase them a "poor choice". Always remember that preference is just that and therefor there are no wrong or right answers or choices.

Amazon was doomed from the start by not going after the rare wine market where their services delivered Amazon efficiencies to an agressive pricing model for wines that are harder to find.

As a general observation, which ties into Amazon' failure, consumers who (and this is the majority of wine buyers according to quite a few studies out there - one great one done by Constellation last year ) fit into the vast majority model of wine drinkers - they do not want to geek out about wine (like we do ;) ). They don't really care about vintage, or terroir, or the exact makeup of a producer of Chateauneuf du Pape's formula. They want a wine they can enjoy as a beverage with friends, while watching Weeds, with dinner, etc... the likelihood that they would ever be vested in shopping Amazon for their food needs, let alone their daily wine ... ain't gonna happen for a long time.

To top that off, those consumers who already purchase wine online, or people who are looking to do that as a regular part of their purchasing patterns, have options that are so much more obviously targeted, which offer much broader choices for the consumer that Amazon came to the party for general wine sales way too late.

Just my .02 and I hate to say I saw this coming, but from the moment Amazon made its intentions known it was doomed to failure strictly because they went after the wrong products and wrong consumer group. Some of that comes from a little bit of inside knowledge - I had interviewed for the senior buyer for this position several years ago and when I saw what was in the works I withdrew my interest.

Comment by Ryan Opaz on October 25, 2009 at 3:54pm

amazing, simply amazing that wine is still so evil that even the Amazon gods can't tackle it's troubles

Comment by Joe Roberts on October 25, 2009 at 5:43am

PLCB 1, Amazon.com 0