From "Internet celebrity" to "long-term celebrity", how should young people drink this glass of wine?

As a part of lifestyle, young people have a strong interest in wine, both in the past and now. In order to cater to the consumption habits of young people, many wine companies have launched "youth wine", trying to impress young people from aspects such as wine body, packaging, and marketing. How should young people drink this glass of wine?

Regarding the topic of young people and alcohol, we often hear the following questions bothering practitioners:

1. Do young people still drink alcohol?
2. How many young people are still drinking?
3. What kind of alcohol do young people drink?
4. …

It can be answered with certainty that alcohol is a part of lifestyle, and young people in the past and today, whether they are those born in the 80s, 90s, Z, or Y, have a strong interest in it. Data shows that only 27.5% of young women have never tried liquor, while only 3.7% of men have.

Perhaps many manufacturers have realized that it is a false proposition that young people do not like to drink, but in order to cater to the consumption habits of young people, many wine companies have launched "youth wines", trying to impress young people from all aspects such as wine body, packaging, and marketing, such as Wuliangye Waizui, Red Star Subian, Xiaolang Liquor, etc.

But will young people really buy into this? Obviously, these internet-famous wines will become outdated and will not become big single products. So how should young people drink this glass of wine?

1. The young man's glass of wine will definitely be raised high

Wine companies have long been salivating over this glass of wine for young people. First of all, young people are a large group of drinkers. We often say that no one will be young forever, but there will always be young people. Although the birth rate is declining year by year, the young population base is huge thanks to the large base of people born in the 1980s and 1990s.

According to the seventh census, there are 223 million people born in the 1980s, 210 million born in the 1990s, and 163 million born in the 2000s in China, accounting for 42% of the population. As a typical label of the "young people" in the new era, the number of Generation Z is about 260 million, accounting for about 19% of the total population of China, of which 70% are Generation Z who have reached the legal drinking age, with a total number of about 180 million.

Secondly, influenced by new media and new channels, young people's demand for alcohol has been fully stimulated.

On the one hand, the rapid rise of video media such as Bilibili and Douyin has provided young people with sufficient alcohol education. Among the online platforms where young people learn about alcohol information, traditional e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and JD.com lead with a share of 76.3%.

However, what cannot be ignored is that short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, and long video platforms such as Bilibili and Tencent Video have a profound impact on young people's understanding of alcohol. 69.0% of young people have learned about alcohol through Douyin and Kuaishou, 68.4% of young people have learned about it through Bilibili and Tencent Video. In addition, 57.3% of young people also use life sharing platforms such as Xiaohongshu as an important medium for obtaining information about alcohol.

On the other hand, Internet channels make alcohol consumption more convenient, greatly satisfying the alcohol purchasing needs of young people. In non-ready-to-drink scenarios, the online channel penetration rate reached 47%. Traditional e-commerce channels are still the main channels for young people to buy alcohol. 59% of young people have bought alcohol through traditional e-commerce channels such as Tmall, JD.com and alcohol sales platforms, but new e-commerce channels have emerged as an important channel for young people to buy alcohol. 41% of young people have bought alcohol through new e-commerce channels represented by Douyin and Xiaohongshu.

Therefore, since 2018, young people's wine consumption has once again ushered in an explosive period. On the one hand, with the support of capital, a number of small and medium-sized brands of rice wine have emerged, such as Berry Sweetheart, Mali Ton Ton, Lanzhou, Zouqi Qingniang, and Shidianyifen.

On the other hand, giants in the soft drink and catering industries, who are optimistic about the huge potential of the young people's alcoholic beverage market, have also crossed over to create a series of wines for young people that cater to the preferences of young people, such as the TOT sparkling drink with an alcohol content of 0.5% launched by Nongfu Spring and Topo Chico, a hard soda sparkling wine launched by Coca-Cola.

2. When should young people drink this glass of wine?

We have seen that young people's alcohol choices have transitioned from the previous general population alcohol (such as white wine, beer, and red wine) to alcohol for the general young population (such as fruit wine, pre-mixed cocktails, soda wine, flower wine, and fruit wine), and further developed into segmented alcohol for young people (such as low-alcohol trendy drinks and wine for young women).

Young people's drinking scenarios are rich and diverse, ranging from regular business socializing, family gatherings, friends' gatherings, drinking alone, to outdoor travel, staying up late to work overtime, decompressing, goodnight wine, etc., and subcategories have emerged in the diverse life scenarios.

Based on the willingness to drink, young people's drinking scenes can be divided into two categories: active drinking and passive drinking. Drinking scenes include leisure and entertainment, friends' dinner, drinking alone at home, camping, outings and other scenes. Young people can often choose the type of drink on their own; while passive drinking includes family dinners and business entertainment. Among them, family dinners are usually determined by the elders, and the type of drink for business entertainment mainly caters to customer preferences.

Active drinking is the mainstream drinking scene for young people. Young people are more likely to pursue the relaxation and pleasure brought by being tipsy when they actively drink, which is also an emotional need that cannot be met in passive drinking scenes. In addition, the diversification of active drinking scenes and the diversification of alcoholic beverages are gradually stimulating the drinking behavior of young consumers.

Specifically, dining with friends is the most common drinking scene for young people. The proportion of dining with friends among college students is much higher than that among white-collar workers. Beer and wine are the most popular due to their low alcohol content, good taste, and high cost-effectiveness.

Drinking alone is the second most common scene for young people to drink alcohol, with 12% of college students and 9% of white-collar workers drinking alone. In addition to beer, wine and whiskey are the two most common alcoholic beverages in drinking alone.

3. Who drank this glass of wine, young man?

In terms of alcohol content, young people prefer wine with low alcohol content, and only 11.2% of young people like wine with an alcohol content of more than 30 degrees. Among them, about 10 degrees is the most popular alcohol content among young people, with 39.6% of young people preferring wine with this alcohol content, which accounts for the highest proportion. However, although young people like low-alcohol wine, they refuse to drink wine with an alcohol content that is too low, and only 2.5% of young people prefer wine with an alcohol content of less than 3 degrees.

However, young people who are novice drinkers and experienced drinkers have different preferences for alcohol content. Novice drinkers prefer lower alcohol content wine, with 60.7% liking wine with an alcohol content below 10%, while their preference for wine with an alcohol content below 5 is 8.8% higher than that of experienced drinkers.

Young women prefer low-alcohol drinks, with 75% preferring drinks with 10% or less alcohol, and 29% preferring drinks with 5% or less alcohol.

Although young men generally prefer lower alcohol content wine, their threshold for alcohol content is higher than that of young women. 65% of young men like wine with an alcohol content of 15 degrees or less, and men are more obviously rejecting wine with too low an alcohol content. Only 0.6% of young men like wine with an alcohol content of 3 degrees or less.

In terms of categories, among young women, white-collar workers in first- and second-tier cities mainly drink beer, accounting for 52%, while young women in small towns most often drink wine and fruit wine/plum wine (accounting for 34% and 20% respectively), and female students in school mainly drink fruit wine/plum wine, accounting for 54%; in terms of region, wine is favored by nearly 1/3 of urban white-collar workers and young people in small towns, and is also the second favorite wine for nearly 1/5 of college students. Fruit wine and plum wine are the most favorite wines for students in school.

4. How should young people drink this glass of wine?

The core demand of young people when drinking is to get tipsy in a relaxing environment to achieve social purposes, but at the same time they hope that it will not affect their work and life the next day. Quantitative research shows that young people are very cautious about the choice of alcohol content. On the one hand, they hope that the alcohol content is low, easy to drink, and on the other hand, they hope to get tipsy.

Quality is the factor that young people care about most, and most (68.2%) consumers have repurchased wine because of its good quality. In addition to quality, Generation Y pays the most attention to brand awareness, while Generation Z relies more on feeling and is most influenced by taste and flavor.

69.4% of Generation Y will repurchase because of high brand awareness, while in comparison, only 50.0% of Generation Z are affected by brand awareness; the biggest factor affecting Generation Z's repurchase is taste, accounting for 68.5%. In addition, novice drinkers prefer to repurchase wines with a taste that suits them, while experienced drinkers pay more attention to the quality of the wine. The biggest factor affecting novice drinkers' repurchase is taste (72.1%), while the biggest factor affecting experienced drinkers is quality (71.4%).

Further analysis of the taste and flavor that young people pursue specifically refers to. The taste that young people pursue has gone beyond the stage of simple sweetness and entered a multi-tasting experience. The summary of what young people think is a good taste: smooth, bubbly, delicate, and not strong.

Among them, malt flavor is more popular among Generation Y than Generation Z, which may be related to the fact that they are exposed to more beer after joining the work than in student days. As for sweet and fruity flavors, men prefer sweet flavors and women prefer fruity flavors, and they prefer sweet and fruity flavors after work. Men are more likely to accept flavors containing peat, smoke, and oak barrels, represented by whiskey. This flavor is more accepted by the younger Generation Z, and many novice drinkers tend to try this flavor of wine after joining the work.

Although the acceptance of alcoholic beverages containing multiple complex flavors is currently low among young people, it is a very promising flavor of alcoholic beverages that conforms to the taste evolution trend of young people.

From the perspective of age, this flavor is the favorite of students, and the overall preference of Generation Z for this flavor is twice that of Generation Y. From the perspective of gender, women are more accepting of this flavor than men. In addition, senior drinkers prefer complex flavors more than novice drinkers.

Although complex-flavored drinks have a certain threshold for novice drinkers and are difficult to accept at first, consumers will become very "addicted" to the complex flavors after drinking them a few times.

Therefore, we can attract young people by blending soft drinks and hard drinks. First, we can soften hard drinks, mainly to meet the needs of a large number of consumers who are intolerant to alcohol or have low alcohol acceptance, and remove the alcohol from the drinks through production technology to form non-alcoholic drinks.

For example, non-alcoholic beer and non-alcoholic wine are derived from beer and wine. The second is the hardening of soft drinks, which is to increase the alcohol concentration on the basis of retaining the rich and diverse taste of soft drinks to achieve the purpose of good palatability and a slight intoxication.

Currently, a large number of hardened soft drink categories are growing rapidly, for example, low-alcohol trendy drinks formed by adding alcohol to juice drinks, and the alcoholic version of soda water - hard seltzer.

Of course, the most important thing is to cultivate young people's drinking mentality. Looking at the successful core products at home and abroad, all of them have conquered the minds of young people with their quality. This is both a difficulty and a key opportunity for whether young people can drink this glass of wine.

Source: Community Marketing Research Institute (ID: Community_Marketing), insights into community consumption