Does social media impact wine choice?

Although wine influencers on social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram are becoming increasingly prevalent, regular wine drinkers in markets including the US, China and the UK continue to rely more heavily on friends and family as trusted sources for wine information.

As the world moves online, accelerated in part by the pandemic, are wine consumers increasingly influenced by social media and online sources for their wine choices and recommendations? Recent findings from Wine Intelligence, a division of the IWSR Group, show that the trends are nuanced.

In China, live stream events featuring wine are becoming increasingly influential. Li Jiaqi, a lifestyle key opinion leader with more than 40M followers on TikTok/Douyin, for example, is reported to have sold 20,000 six-bottle cases of wine produced by Great Wall within 30 seconds during a Chinese New Year-related livestream in 2019. Meanwhile, Viya, a live streamer dubbed the ‘Queen of Taobao’ with more than 17M followers, reportedly sold 30,000 cases of another Great Wall-produced wine within one minute during a sponsored livestreaming session.

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