Afternoon Brief, February 21st

WSWA's Sipsource Report Tracks 2023 Year-End Losses for Both Wine and Spirits: While there seems to be clear consensus on how difficult 2023 was for the beverage alcohol industry, there is no single agreed-upon view of what this means for the future...

By Susan DeMatei In the September/October issue of Grapevine Magazine, I wrote an article entitled “The four reasons you should care about online reviews.” As a quick recap, the four reasons were: We are at the precipice of a cultural shift from Baby Boomer values (externally showing luxury as validation, including professional and published reviews and scores) to Millennial values (internal and self-validation, including being part of a community that shares your beliefs). The internet and modern eCommerce train us to look for the most popular brands and rank the highest among people (we assume) are peers. Google evaluates reviews when delivering search engine responses and ranking. Your customers care about review sites. 92% to 97% of customers look for or read a review before doing business with a company. 80% of us trust reviews by strangers just as highly as a reference from our friends. 72% of us look for only positive reviews, and 86% will not do business with those