The Grapevine

Wine Shop Marketing: Why Selling One Thing Can Work

June 10th, 2015

Consumer psychology says that selling one thing can make a big difference. Also, making your shop a pleasant place to spend time is good business. Here’s why. [level-members]

If you can get a customer through your door to buy one thing, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to sell him or her more. Ravi Dhar of the Yale School of Management refers to this phenomenon as “shopping momentum.” This means it can make good sense to focus at least some of your social media and email marketing efforts on single items or single types of items and really going into depth on their strengths. In the case of wine that would typically be value, food-friendliness, seasonality, etc.

Of course, you’ll want your broader marketing to be, well, broader, so that the world at large knows you carry more than just that one thing.

Not unrelated, we also heard on the radio this morning that the more time people spend in your shop, the more they are likely to spend. Pretty obvious observation, that. But what’s interesting is that the research cited points to more time in a shop leading to less discipline. So get ‘em to stay and they may go beyond the single bottle – or single case – that they really came in to buy. Make the shop a pleasant place to be, make impulse buys easy to see, make sure your staff are well versed in making shopping an experience and not just a transaction. [/level-members]