User Survey 2019: Wine shopping

What kind of wine shopping habits do users of this site have? Here’s what you told us in our recently completed online survey:

Supermarkets
Asked which supermarket chain has the best wine offering, the results were as follows:

1. Makro – 27%
2. Woolworths – 25.5%
3. Checkers – 20%
4. TOPS at SPAR – 14%
5. Pick n Pay – 8%
6. Other – 5.5%

Some respondents commented that they preferred not to do their wine shopping at any of the major supermarkets while others noted that there were big variations in offerings between different stores within the same chain. A question for a future survey is which of the specialist liquor chains (Aroma Drop Inn, Liquorcity, Norman Goodfellows and Ultra) has the best offering.

Influence on purchase decisions
Asked what motivates your choice of wine, the leading responses were as follows:

Read reviews and make notes of wines to buy in future – 66%
Visit wineries and buy new wines after tasting – 65%
Buy what you know and like – 52%
Try to always buy new wines – 44%
Use winemag.co.za as a guide of what to buy next – 43%

Significantly, only 8% of respondents said that they belonged to a wine club with wines selected for them.

Asked what factors were pertinent in making a purchase decision, respondents were asked to select up to five options from a list of ten. Price (78%) and variety (74%) rule while wine-geek factors region (56%) and vintage (54%) are also important. Organic certification is the least of concerns – not too many tree huggers among you!

Quality relative to the price
Asked if it is possible to get a decent bottle of wine for R40, 54% replied no but that there was plenty at R60, 28% replied that you needed to spend at least R80 and 18% said that R40 did allow you to buy something satisfactory.

Online shopping
Shopping online is not new to the vast majority of you – 96% have made a purchase of something at one point or another – but this drops to 67% when it comes to wine purchases in the last 12 months. Opportunity for online retailers, one would think.

534 responses were received. For user demographics, click here.