Morrisons is going back to merchandising wine by country of origin – ditching the experimental approaches to the category brought in under former CEO Dalton Philips.
After the 2012 launch of online tool Taste Test, which matched consumers’ flavour preferences against wines in the range, the retailer began displaying wines by style in many stores, with bottles divided into four groupings: sweet, fresh, smooth and intense. Some stores also used price as the primary merchandising system.
But despite Morrisons recently being named supermarket of the year in the International Wine Challenge’s merchant awards, these approaches are now set to follow the retailer’s misty veg machines onto the scrapheap of ideas tried out during Philips’ tenure.
Morrisons said that, in addition to the new layout of the wine fixture, it would introduce more consistent branding to the section and clearer and simpler shelf edge labels with a colour-coded style descriptor, food matching suggestions, and logos for award-winning wines.
“Customers told us they prefer to navigate by country of origin and they value clear shelf edge labelling in what can be a confusing category,” said BWS category manager Phil Cave. “So we responded. We‘re proud of our new look department.”
One national selection set to gain in prominence is French wine. Morrisons added 20 wines from the country to its range earlier this year, admitting it had been “lagging behind the competition”.
“France was an area where we under-traded,” head of wine operations Mark Jarman told The Grocer in May. “A new world consumer might buy South African one week, Australian the next,” he added. “But with France, it tends to be the case that if a customer is looking for France they will probably only buy France. If you haven’t got that offering, they’re probably not going to buy wine from you.”
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