Why do people avoid consuming wine?

The marketing panacea is to create new customers without cannibalizing existing sales. An estimated 31% of the adult population in Australia consume wine; figures are similar in the US. There are precedents for much higher wine consumption levels, in the UK for instance, it is estimated that 60.8% of the adult population consume wine (Ritchie, 2007). Some people avoid drinking alcohol altogether, for reasons of health, religion or other factors, and no wine company would seek to encourage such people to start drinking wine. However, those consumers who already consume alcoholic beverages, but avoid drinking wine, are a potential untapped market. The excitement around this segment is that they are completely new customers to the wine industry and do not represent customers taken from a competitor. This benefits not only the individual wine company in question, but also the wider wine industry. Even conservative assumptions lead to multi-billion dollar estimates of the benefit in attracting current wine ‘avoiders’ to become more regular wine drinkers, especially where international as well as domestic sales are considered.We report on our current study that focuses on the reasons why individuals prefer not to purchase and/or drink wine (though do so for other alcoholic beverages). Part of a larger project using mixed-methods, we report here on the outcomes from the initial qualitative component.