The secret to creating a high value Millennial? Wine at the family dinner table
Friday, 29 August, 2014
Wine Intelligence
America’s 29 million “Millennial” generation wine drinkers are set to reshape the US wine market into a more diverse, tech-friendly and culturally mainstream sector, according to a new report published today by Wine Intelligence.
Monthly wine drinkers under the age of 35 now account
for over 30% of the American wine drinking population, and have grown in both
size and influence over the past 5 years, according to Millennial Wine Drinkers
in the United States 2014 report.
Researchers also found a large disparity in terms of behavior and attitude
among younger drinkers, which correlated strongly with their involvement in the
category. The highest involved group, dubbed “Epicureans” by the research team,
exhibited high spending, high frequency of consumption and involvement in other
aspects of the category, such as wine tourism. At the other end of the scale
the low involved wine drinkers (known as “Peripherals”) saw wine as just
another drink, and one which they generally consumed only when their peers were
doing so.
When exploring why these differences in attitude occurred, the research team
discovered a correlation between high involvement in wine and whether a bottle
made a regular appearance at the family dinner table when these consumers were
growing up. The connection with wine at home was a stronger predictor of high
involvement in adulthood than any other factor, including household income and
geographic location.
Lulie Halstead, Chief Executive of Wine Intelligence, said: “As an industry we
need to recognise the growing importance of Millennial consumers to our
collective bottom line, and also recognise that they have very different needs
compared with their parents’ generation.
“It’s also gratifying to refute any theory that involved, engaged wine drinkers
are born rather than made. The data strongly points to the influence of
parents, in the home, in educating their children on the pleasures of food and
wine, and how much of an impact this has on their behaviour as adults".