Redefining wine retail experience for the Chinese Wine Illiterates

Abstract

Fastest growing wine market
“Chinese wine market has been growing steadily between 2008-2012, by a constant growth rate of 137%” (Wang, 2018). The importation of wine is expected to grow from 2 million cases in 2007 to 50 million cases in 2017. The potential market is estimated at between 50 million and 250 million Chinese drinkers (Hays, 2015). This headline figure points out that there is a shift in wine consumption from the traditional producer countries, namely western countries to new wine lovers in the US and China. This makes the east Asian wine market particularly interesting for wine retailers across the globe to explore. However, the assumption that a majority of wine consumers in developing wine drinking countries are novice wine drinkers. This suggests there is a lot of room for cross-cultural design (van Boeijen, 2015) and design for food adaption, with novice wine drinkers.

Cultural relevance
Food and beverages carry history when they are consumed. The act of drinking wine has much resemblance to the culture that one belongs to. “To a Frenchmen, knowing how to drink is a national technique which serves to qualify him, to demonstrate at once his performance, his control and his sociability” (Barthes, Lavers & Cape, 1993). There is convincing historical and contemporary evidence to show that the adoption of ‘foreign’ drinks often involves the adoption of the culturally established drinking patterns (SIRC, 1998). However, there is a debate about: should wine drinking developing countries adopt the same drinking practice from the developed countries, or is it more interesting to encourage them to develop their own drinking rituals relevant to specific drinking context?

Who is the target?
Culturally Based Wine Illiterates, (abbreviated as CBWI), are defined as the wine drinkers who lack the knowledge, skills and behaviour related to wine. This theory was deducted from the food literacy theory by Vidgen, & Gallegos (2014). Due to the absence of drinking context, and the high barrier to entry in getting to know wine, their confidence in various wine-related practices is affected negatively, hence it becomes more difficult when choosing a wine to consume.

This preliminary research question helped to kick start the project:
“How to help designers to design a shopping experience for Culturally-Based Wine Illiterates?”
However, in the journey of investigating how to design a wine shopping experience. This topic can be broken down into two sub-steps to investigate. First is the human interaction with wine, and the second level is about the customer’s shopping experience with a given wine retail environment. Thereafter, the following sub-questions emerged:

Human-wine interaction:
Is knowledge of wine required for the consumer to enjoy the wine?
What role does culture play in adopting foreign wine consumption practices?
What we usually learn from the culture is a develop taste pallet for a particular type of food and habit of eating, how could a wine illiterate find their way in wine drinking?

Shopping experience:
How does culture shape one’s expectation from a shopping experience?
Given the condition that for CBWI, the reference system in the realm of wine is missing, what kind of difficulties do they experience in the shopping experience?