The impact of e-commerce on alcohol trading

According to research by IWSR, 1.8% of the value of all global beverage alcohol is sold through e-commerce (2018 figures) despite regulation complexities.

It is wine that has best harnessed the selling power of the online retail environment with US $8 billion of sales, corresponding to 3.6% of all wine value sales. Around US $6.5 billion of spirits were sold online in 2018 (2% of global sales).

The online environment has proved to be well placed to service wine drinkers’ curiosity and to educate and inform consumption choices.

The dramatic expansion of online wine marketplaces like Vivino, which after just nine years of trading now claims to have 10 million different wines and as many as 35 million users, has illustrated the compatibility of wine selling with the digital space.

The rapid expansion of wine sales online (6.5% of total sales value) has even threatened the viability of independent bricks-and-mortar wine stores in the UK, prompting one leading wine retailer, Majestic, to announce that they are to sell off much of their retail estate to concentrate on their online business, Naked Wines. In China online sales now account for 9% of total sales value.