We know that alcohol sales are up during the pandemic, but, with more people literally staying home for the holidays, what will holiday alcohol sales look like this holiday season?
Every time there is a major disruption large enough to command the world’s attention, people eventually start to speculate about what the post-disruption world will look like. This is where we get terms like New Normal & more recently, Next Normal. And while those terms can provide some comfort, most executives who I speak with are operating on the assumption of “no normal” for the foreseeable future. They see this continual disruption as an opportunity to move faster and reinvent old playbooks.
Who will consumers spend the holidays with?
So how does one prepare for a holiday season in the “No Normal”? At Resonate, we specialize in giving real-time intelligence on the who, what, when, where and why of consumer behavior through our proprietary National Consumer Study. We analyze trends, and as you can see, between September and October we started to see that people are expanding their circles.
Roughly 34.5M people indicated they are now including extended family in their holiday plans.
Toasting to the Holidays with Family
So, knowing that more people plan to celebrate with immediate and extended family, intuitively we should expect to see an incremental lift in alcohol purchases.
While that is a useful macroeconomic indicator, if you’re trying to connect with someone and get them to try your product over a competitor, you’re probably most interested in actionable data on how to differentiate yourself. Further, if you have a portfolio that includes both wine & spirits, you’d benefit from some directional intelligence on how the path to purchase differs between categories.
What Matters to Consumers Buying Specific Spirits?
According to Resonate’s latest research, if you’re trying to entice this group of 48.2M consumers to buy your wine, you are 18% more likely to be successful if you highlight how well your brand pairs with a specific food. You also get a 15% bump if your messaging can position your brand as “new” in the eyes of the consumer.
Conversely, when it comes to buying liquor this group is much less adventurous. When asked about their liquor selection criteria, 91% of them said that familiarity is the #1 factor in purchasing.
As a researcher/marketer, I can start to connect the dots from research to visualizing the messaging and creative and provide strategic input that should inform ad campaigns, signage, offers and in-store display.
The challenge I hear most frequently from clients stems from the pressure of having to make big predictions and commit resources (both human and financial) without data that captures the rapidity of change going on across the country.
Resonate helps companies of all shapes and sizes understand their customers and unknown prospects in ways that are impossible through traditional research. How much and how rapidly is product preference shifting? I spoke to people in various roles at major grocery chains and learned that demand for certain products has been fluctuating by as much as 400% week-to-week when previously it had been consistently predictable year-over-year. You have no choice but to keep up with where consumers stand today.
And, with 13,000+ attributes on more than 200 million unique profiles tied to over 550 million devices, Resonate Connected Profiles allow marketers to accelerate deep, real-time research insights directly into action.
