Wine GDO: the value of experience

Wine is no longer at the center of daily life as it once was. Declining consumption, new sensibilities, and more selective spending habits have made the emotional bond that once united wine with the pleasures of the table more fragile. What role can the GDO wine sector play in an enhancement?

In this context, large retailers-often seen as neutral and impersonal places-can instead play a decisive role in reconnecting wine to people, giving it back a concrete, accessible and current meaning.

Today, consumers are not just looking for a product: they are looking for an experience consistent with their moment of consumption. A bottle to accompany an ordinary dinner, a personal pampering, a prestigious gift or an evening with friends. And retail, which intercepts millions of choices every day, can become the place where this plurality of occasions is translated into simple language and recognizable.

Centrality of price

Price, in this scenario, again becomes the main compass.

According to our analysis of purchasing behavior, when choosing wine in large-scale retail outlets price is the most immediate interpretive key. Even more so than territory, appellation or alcohol content.

Price is not only an economic indicator, but a narrative signal that communicates function of use and level of expectation.

• 3.99 tell a wine for everyday life;
• 7.99 euros a bottle for a dinner with friends or for a casual occasion;
• from 15.99 euros and up., on the other hand, wine takes on a symbolic value: a gesture of attention, a representative gift, a “special” bottle for an important evening.

Constructing and reading assortments through this interpretive key means helping consumers orient themselves intuitively, returning price to its original role: That of language, not promotional leverage.

It is the concept of the everyday fair price, the everyday fair price, which consumers perceive as consistent with the quality and experience they seek.

Retail can enhance this logic not through discounts, but through the clarity of segmentation, linearity of assortment and readability of the offer.

Discovery experience

But restoring meaning to wine also means offering it as an experience of discovery.

Thematic micro-islands, guided tastings, QR codes that tell short and concrete stories, pairing advice or suggestions for moments of consumption-these are tools that help people choose with greater awareness and curiosity.

Within this framework, a new and as yet little explored frontier emerges: the retail media.

Through digital platforms integrated into the brand’s channels-from interactive flyers to personalized content in loyalty apps-GDO can transform its communication capabilities into a true extension of wine marketing.

For manufacturers, it means having a powerful and measurable means of engaging in dialogue with end customers, enhancing brand, territory and storytelling directly at the moment of the purchase decision.

Mediating and connecting

The role of large-scale retail is no longer just to display, but to mediate and connect, becoming a place of education, discovery and storytelling.

For producers, this means working together with retailers not to “push” a wine, but to interpret together the language of real consumption. Each price range, each type and each format must correspond to a concrete, recognizable, experienced need.

Only in this way can wine once again become a natural presence in the spending habits and convivial moments of the modern consumer.

A cultural challenge

The challenge, ultimately, is cultural: to return wine to its original function of pleasure, sharing and identity, but in a contemporary, understandable and current language.

Retail has all the tools to do this: knowledge of the customer, ability to segment the offer, advanced digital tools and-now more than ever-a growing role as a communication platform.

It is now up to producers and retailers to work together to give wine a new space of meaning. Because the future of wine will not come through more complex labels or rarer appellations, but through the ability to Making simple what is authentic and precious what is everyday.