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Great Britain: detecting opportunities in the biggest champagne export market.

How search listening helped assess champagne export market potential in the UK by mapping all local trends, favorite brands and most searched type of beverages from search engine data.

Is it the right time to prepare for exporting more champagne to the UK? 🎯

We believe search data are truly reflecting what consumers want. Extracted from the biggest online consumer panel, search data faithfully transcribe upcoming champagne market trends and help predict brands/products with higher potential.

Historically established in the UK market without local marketing strategy, a famous French Champagne brand wants to fuel its growth by increasing its market shares in the UK. Signals from retailers seem to express an increasing need for champagne in the British market – so they would like to confirm their hypothesis.

We used search listening to review if there was an uplift of champagne consumption in Great Britain & define how our client could adapt its go-to-market strategy.

How to collect search data to analyze market trends? 📈

We scanned major marketplaces and websites selling champagne to collect hundreds of expressions tied to beverages both in French and English.

We extracted 1000+ semantic expressions from these major e-commerce platforms based on our proprietary AI algorithms. 

We just kept expressions that were actually searched by consumers – what we refer to as search queries.

All these expressions were segmented to represent all categories & products from the champagne market: brands, prestige cuvées, types of champagne …

Starting with France 🇫🇷

In France, we noticed a huge discrepancy between Eastern & Western regions. 

Both Ile-de-France and Grand Est have a much higher affinity for champagne (number of search queries per 100k population). On the other hand, Western regions such as Brittany, Pays de la Loire, Normandy, and Centre Val de Loire recorded an amazingly lower amount of search queries about Champagne, given their population.

Another insight is about Corsica during summer. In July and August, Corsica is the region, where consumers searched the most for champagne – again given the local population. That is explained by the huge amount of tourists coming to Corsica during summertime. 

Local affinity with Champagne in France 🇫🇷 (total search volume for 100k population)
Local affinity with Champagne in the UK 🇬🇧

On Her Majesty's Dinner Service 🇬🇧

Despite all the champagne brands being located in France, online searches in the UK are similar to what we see in France in terms of volume.

Surprisingly, the overall volume in France and Great Britain searches was slightly equal in 2021. And out of 71 monitored brands, all generate interests among British consumers, revealing a strong awareness of players and products. 

While England is naturally the biggest market counting for 86% of overall UK searches, Scotland has the same affinity with Champagne as England.
 

Comparing brand awareness between two different countries 🏆

The brand awareness distribution is not the same depending on which side of the Chanel you are. While Ruinart is by far the most searched brand in France, its awareness in the UK is surprisingly lower.

We spotted Moët & Chandon, Bollinger, Veuve Clicquot, Taittinger, Laurent Perrier as the British’s favorites. All these brands are actually much more searched in the UK than in France (in total volume).

champagne trends uk / fr

Ruinart, true brand leader?

A French leader looking for fame across the English Channel.

#1st 🇫🇷

1.8M searches in 2021

#12th 🇬🇧

160k searches in 2021

More precisely, what specific cuvées do people want to drink? 🥂

British regions appears to be very prone to consume champagne rosé. Specific vintages such as “blanc de blanc” and “blanc de noir” are mostly searched in France.

Also, brut champagne is slightly less searched in UK. Meanwhile, new trends emerged, champagne rosé seems a safe bet to capitalise on for any market player.

champagne trends uk / fr
  • 📈 Rosé is particularly searched in UK’s regions (+228% vs. France)
  • 📈 Rosé is also more researched in the southern France regions (PACA, Nouvelle-Aquitaine…)
  • 📉 Blanc de blanc Champagne is less searched in the UK (around 10x less)
  • 📉 Brut Champagne is slightly less searched in the UK (-30%)
  • 📈 Brut Champagne is very famous in Corsica closely as much as in Île-de-France

Champagne is not the only option 🍻🍾🍸

Favorite types of beverages strongly depend on on cultural differences.

We wanted to also compare the affinity for other products than champagne, with its main beverages alternatives like prosecco, lambrusco, sparkling wine, cava…

While the UK are more likely to prefer prosecco, cava and sparkling wine, French people used to favorise champagne, crémant and lambrusco. Obviously, crémant is particularly appreciated in Grand Est, though, crémant is also pretty much researched in Scotland.

A massive seasonal effect affecting both countries 📊

Our platform turned out to be key to find out the best timing to catch the demand and answer to the true needs of the consumers. 

champagne trends uk / fr
  • 🙃 Champagne is only 16% more searched on Google in France than in the UK
  • 😗 Lambrusco is 85% more looked in France
  • 😀 Cava is 89% more searched in UK than in France
  • 😎 Prosecco is twice as many searched in the UK than in France
  • 🤯 Sparkling wine is researched 1.447% more in the UK

Xmas boom, summer bump 🎩

Christmas period is a landmark period considering search queries linked with champagne and prosecco.

  • Total volume = 2.9 million 
  • Almost 3 times more than March (1,1M)
Similarly, we were also able to find out a slight increase for champagne and prosecco Google queries during summer (from April to August).

 

champagne trends uk / fr

Does Santa love champagne? 🎅

However we do not detect a very strong seasonality effect with other type of beverages such as lambrusco, sparkling wine or créman  – for which ones the impact of Christmas is way less significative. 

Is the British market a good opportunity to expand? 📈

Our BCG-style matrix highlights relations between total & growth in search volume.

In France 🇫🇷

In France, Ruinart is outstandingly over the top of the market with the best brand awaress (in search volume) and a positive growth rate.

Tsarine is tied with an extremely high growth rate (around +40%), tough its volume is among the lowest.

Krug is in a very difficult position in France, presenting an important loss of searches (-40%) and a very low volume of searches.

BCG matrix overview in France 🇫🇷
BCG matrix overview in the UK 🇬🇧

In the UK 🇬🇧

In the UK, the distribution is kind of scattered compared to France. Various brands stand out from the crowd, especially Moët & Chandon, Laurent Perrier, Bollinger, Veuve Clicquot and Taittinger.

The British market seems to be in a better shape, considering the search volume evolution.

Overall, brand awareness for champagne brands is growing faster in the UK than in France. One who does believe in search data accuracy would consider the British market as in a positive dynamic.

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champagne trends uk / fr

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