Wine.com (From Video Via Email)

Wine.com (from video via email)

In the.com era, an idea like a site commercializing wine may not sound remarkable, however, it is more than an interesting idea. Wine.com is more than one of the simple online, e - commerce websites. Giving consultation on the types of wine one can buy, informing on wine tasting and wine enjoying in general, Wine.com is, in my opinion, a former, a modeler, a site that has every chance to become a true voice in the wine industry.

An analysis of the case study should probably start with an analysis of the industry the business is part of. Nevertheless, this should prove a difficult task. Wine.com is part of the wine industry, first of all, through the nature of the products it commercializes. On the other hand, Wine.com is also part of the new IT wave, where e-commerce, e-distribution or e-marketing make the rule. In this sense, we may point out towards the fact that the site is actually a business and a business activating in more than one industry.

The site's uniqueness comes from this very melding. You can sell books, electronics or even cars through the Internet. These are commodities and commodities are those types of products which are "mass-produced unspecialized products." There is no need to see such products, because they are not produced to fit particular needs of the consumer.

Wine is a completely different league. If you are a true wine drinker, you need not only to see the bottle, examine the year and place of production, including the specific vineyard, but often smell and taste the wine before you are prepared to buy it. In this sense, for a wine drinker it may seem a sacrilege to buy off the Internet. So, one of the most important problems at Wine.com is, in my opinion, the hiatus and contrast that occurs between the fact that the company is addressing an informed group of consumers, the true connoisseurs, but, on the other hand, a category of consumers that is ready to give up a closer investigation of the product before it is actually bought.

The people at Wine.com have remarkably found out different ways to solve this problem. One of the first viable solutions was an extension of their targeted clientele. Why refer only to the connoisseurs when there is a rich potential from those people that are ready to buy and enjoy a bottle of wine without belonging necessarily to that category of persons. Wine.com decided that this was a significant category of consumers it needed to address.

One of the methods they used were the amusing and relaxed commercials. The movie provides two examples, just as inspired and revealing for the idea at Wine.com. Basing their campaign on the idea that choosing the right wine is a difficult choice and that often you have to face the public opprobrium if the choice is bad, the commercials are meant to show that, in this sense, there are people at Wine.com helping you make the right decisions. In this sense, Wine.com passed on from being a simple online shop for wine to a wine library, a site where you could inform and be informed, where the connoisseurs at Wine.com can help you enjoy wine.

Making this step, however, revealed one of the second important problems that needs to be discussed. This is more of a continuous problem, in the sense that the company needs to permanently come up with solutions to remain competitive in this area. I am referring here to online advertising and marketing. The challenge here is basically the same as in the case of selling a non-commodity product. The website is supposed to be an advertising tool, yet you find yourself in a situation where you have to advertise the advertising tool. Indeed, there is no profit in having an excellent site offering wonderful information and quality wine if nobody visits it. In this sense, there are two approaches to Wine.com's marketing techniques. First of all, it needed to create a competitive site that could properly address the consumer's needs. Second of all, it needed to create the necessary emulation to bring consumers to the website.

The first issue was addressed by the team of developer and the marketing team. These teams worked relentlessly into making a good website, a website that offered all relevant facilities, including a tester that helped you pick the right wine according to your tastes.

The second issue was indeed more difficult. A normal site is often advertised through the means of search engine optimization (SEO), however, in this case, it couldn't have been a solution: who goes on google and types 'wine'?! The choices Wine.com made were affiliate websites and portal sites. Their presence (close to a partnership) in portals such as Yahoo is important, but even more relevant are partnerships and affiliations with the likes of Bloomberg.com. The choice of Bloomberg for such an affiliation is not random, because you would expect to see the same people on the Bloomberg news website as you would see buying a bottle of wine. Additionally, we can remind here of the partnerships with United Airlines, for example.

The cost and complexity of (1) creating and (2) running and managing a website such as Wine.com should never be underestimated. People are looking for several things in such a website. First of all, there is the clear informational role. They will browse Wine.com in order to find out additional information about wine, perhaps decide what kind of wine they like and, perhaps in the end, even buy a bottle or two.

Second of all, such a site needs to be innovative. Innovation, the element of new in itself, is reassuring especially when we are discussing a somewhat revolutionary idea, buying a non-commodity online. In this sense, the complexity of the whole enterprise is to determine what will keep the public close by, if not as active customers, perhaps as potential consumers. This is the challenge that Wine.com needs to face in term of competing online companies.

As a related marketing issue, but a different issue altogether, we need to mention the difficulties associated with branding wine online and with branding online in general. This is the differentiation between geographical/physical branding and virtual branding that any company operating online needs to face. In traditional branding, you create a physical image of the product which will lead on to become an idea associated with the product. In virtual branding, you need to discover alternative means of achieving the same results, because the brand in this case is the website rather than the products it commercializes, which leads us back to advertising the advertiser (branding the website/advertiser).

One of the third important issues that the company needed to handle was customer relations. We have already breeched part of this subject when referring to the advertising methods. Nevertheless, we need to point out to several specific things. The nature of Wine.com's business (wine + e-commerce) means that you have to have a permanent contact with the customer, whether to assure them, to bring them more information etc. As the owner said in the movie, it is a permanent "demystification" process, in the sense that the customer will feel more and more relaxed about the whole ideas of (1) buying wines and (2) buying wine online. There are abounding emails and inquiries at Wine.com and the company has a specialized department to cover this type of issues. As previously mentioned, the informational role of the Wine.com site is extremely important, because any of the people who have browsed the website simply for informational purpose are potential customers and may become active consumers in the future.

It is interesting to have a brief evaluation of the future and this will be approached from two different perspectives: (1) the evolution of the industry and (2) the evolution Wine.com is likely to have in the industry. The former is likely to follow the trends of the two component industries, the wine industry and the IT/e-commerce industry. For example, statistics make a clear distinction between the New World (United States, South Africa, Australia, Chile) and the Old World (Europe in general). The New World is much more dynamic and enthusiastic about wine consumption, with increased percentages of overall beverages.