Imagine opening a bottle of wine and asking your mobile or smart speaker (think Siri, Alexa, Google Home) to guide you through a tasting. The voice app Wine Tasting AI, delivers educational and interactive content to make the wine experience more friendly and easy to understand for anyone who enjoys wine and wants to discover, connect, and buy directly from Australian wine producers.
There are nearly 2,500 wineries in Australia across 65 wine regions: mostly small family-owned operations. Experts predict market forces will drive many wineries out of business over the next decade if they don’t develop effective digital marketing strategies to reach customers quickly.
“Unlike other wine apps, Wine Tasting AI is 100 per cent focused on consumer preferences, not only the wine. The voice app asks questions while users are drinking to make personalised recommendations,” said André Alcantara, CMO of CogniVocal, the creators of Wine Tasting AI.
According to the Wine Australia report, although the wine industry is a $45 billion market, only $1 billion comes from Direct to Consumer (DTC) sales. While the average revenue per bottle in third party online retailers is $5.74, the income per bottle when producers sell directly to consumers is $15.85.
Winemakers in Australia face the enormous challenges of climate change, a global pandemic limiting access of visitors to the cellar doors and unfair competition for space on the shelf with labels owned by the big Australian retailers.
As a positive legacy of the pandemic, there was an acceleration of digitisation, and wine e-commerce has become a convenient channel to shop. Thus, the battle for consumer attention in the digital space has drastically increased and became much more expensive.
Dyung Ngo, CTO of CogniVocal, said, “the efforts of big tech giants Amazon and Google have contributed to speed up the adoption of voice technology among users worldwide. ” This provides a unique opportunity for wineries to reach out and sell directly to consumers through their own channel, instead of competing for price in other distributors channels.”
