Wine Subscribers Seek Out the Personal Touch

As wine subscriptions and other alcoholic beverage services look to secure consumers’ loyalty, products personalization is key, PYMNTS Intelligence reveals.

By the Numbers

For the June edition of “Subscription Commerce Readiness Report, The Loyalty Factor,” PYMNTS Intelligence surveyed a census-balanced panel of more than 2,000 U.S. consumers with retail product subscriptions understand what factors motivate merchant choice and drive longstanding relationships.

The results reveal that consumers who hold alcoholic beverage subscriptions are more likely than those with any other type of subscription to seek out the option to personalize the products that are added to or removed from their subscription boxes. Twenty-six percent of these subscribers listed this capability as important when signing up for a retail subscription.

The Data in Action

Indeed, merchants are noting this demand. In an interview with PYMNTS, David Lynch, editorial director of wine curation company SommSelect, which has several monthly subscriptions, said that as more players enter the space, offering the personal touch becomes all the more important to securing customers’ loyalty.

“For all of the tech optimization that we’re seeking, and for all of the efficiencies that creates, there still needs to be a personal signature on it,” Lynch said. “We’re still creating content for people by humans and doing it in a thoughtful way. That, to me, is a point of differentiation for us that we can’t lose, … because without some soul, why would you join a club? I think that’s probably how people end up shaking out what clubs they belong to.”

These matters will become all the more important as the alcoholic beverage eCommerce space grows in years ahead.

“Alcohol is relatively under-enabled versus other verticals. … That owes a lot to the three-tier system in the United States coming out of prohibition and the regulatory framework that has created a lot of impositions on the product category itself,” Zac Brandenberg, co-founder and CEO of alcohol eCommerce platform DRINKS, told PYMNTS. “So, [the space is] really young in many, many ways, especially compared to other products that you can buy, and also really immature when you think about how large the market is.”