How Women Shop for Italian Wine

What do you look for when you buy a bottle of Italian wine?

It’s a simple question but it’s also one that doesn’t have an easy answer. You’d think that every single person has their own criteria when it comes to buying a bottle of wine. Some may look for a certain type of grape or only buy from a select number of producers. Others may prefer to find something that they’ve never tried before.

That’s all well and good. But what you may not realise is that how people shop for wine changes based on their gender.

That’s right!

The things that men look for aren’t necessarily the same things that women will look for when shopping for a bottle of wine.

So, that brings us to the central question posed in this article.

How do women shop for Italian wine?

While there will always be some variance on an individual level, there are a few common things that women tend to look for when buying a bottle.

Factor #1 – Novelty

Wine producers will try all manner of things in an effort to get you to pay attention to their wines. We’ve seen producers use celebrity endorsements to catch our eye and we’ve also seen plenty of producers who’ve tried all manner of gimmicks when it comes to bottles of their actual wine producer.

Pink Champagne anyone?

Interestingly, there’s a good reason why wine producers use these gimmicks – they work.

Or at least, they work for a large portion of female consumers. You see, women are apparently more likely to pay attention to a wine’s novelty factor that men.

Now, this doesn’t always mean that the wine has to have some big gimmick for women to pay attention to it. It just means that the wine will have something a little bit different that sets it apart from all of the other wines around it.

It’s that ever-elusive novelty factor that piques the interest. And it seems that women look for it far more often than men.

This may be due to a desire to want to try new things as opposed to going for the things that you already know about. A touch of novelty also gives you something to talk about if you’re intending to serve the wine to friends later in the evening.

So for all of the Italian wine producers out there, it’s worth thinking about how you can make your wines more novel if you hope to attract female buyers.

Factor #2 – Curiosity

They say that curiosity killed the cat. But when it comes to wine, curiosity plays a big role in the decisions that female consumers make.

The key here is that producers need to provide something that piques the interest of the potential buyer. For example, an interesting label may catch a buyer’s eye and cause them to start asking questions. Again, the novelty factor comes into play here. If you offer something that looks a little different to all of the other wines around, you’re going to catch some buyers’ eyes. And they’re going to ask questions that could lead to them buying your wine.

And those questions are the most important part here. It’s one thing to pique somebody’s curiosity. It’s quite another to maintain that interest when they start to ask questions.

Female buyers will allow their curiosity to lead them in the direction of new wines. It’s up to the wine’s producer to ensure that they have good enough answers for the questions that such buyers are liable to ask.

Factor #3 – The Price Point

We can thank market research firm Canadean for highlighting the importance of these factor.

They looked into the wine buying habits of both men and women as part of one of their surveys.

Interestingly, they found that women drink far more wine than men. In fact, men only account for 41% of all of the wine sold, with the women accounting for 59%.

You’d imagine that this would mean that women spend more than men on wine. But that’s not the case.

That 41% of male purchases amounted to $1.8 billion. For the 59% of female purchases, it was $1 billion. 

This suggests that price is a major factor for women when deciding on a bottle of wine to buy. And that makes sense, according to Canadean. The researcher says that men are more likely to buy a bottle of wine to mark an occasion. Thus, they’ll spend a little bit more money on it. However, women are more likely to buy a bottle to help them to relax. As such, they’ll look for something a little more cost-effective, without sacrificing quality of course.

Either way, it looks like women pay far more attention to the price tag than men when buying Italian wine.

The Final Word

Those are three of the factors that seem to influence female wine buyers. However, it’s crucial that we point out that these aren’t universal, by any means. There are plenty of women out there who have completely different criteria when it comes to buying Italian wine. And there are surely plenty of men around who consider these factors when making their own decisions.

These are just a couple of trends that research has shown have a tendency to crop up when comparing women’s and men’s wine buying habits. They’re certainly not a comprehensive guide on how you should go about buying wine, regardless of your gender.

Still, it’s interesting to think about these trends. As a woman, have you ever found yourself drawn to a wine because it seemed to possess a novelty factor that the wines around it don’t have? Perhaps you find yourself asking more questions about the wines that you buy or visiting sites like xtraWine to learn more?

If so, you’re following some of the trends that the industry has identified!

One thing’s for sure. It doesn’t matter how you decide on which wine to buy. What matters is that you get it from a vendor that you can trust.

And with xtraWine, you know that you’ll always get quality Italian wines at affordable prices.