Despite the challenges of complex inter-state sales and shipping regulations, alcohol brands in the US need not abstain from serving digital commerce to B2B and B2C customers.

With the global e-commerce market size for alcoholic beverages valued at $42B during the pandemic (2021) and forecast to reach $173B by 2031, tapping into digital revenue is top-of-mind for beer, wine and spirits brands – and many are already successfully using digital commerce to build buzz, stir up sales and strengthen business partnerships and consumer loyalty.

So, what are the trending digital investments alcoholic beverage producers are making to capture this opportunity in 2024?

In this POV:

  • Digital solutions for Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) delivery
  • Digital strategies for capturing consumer data
  • Critical capabilities for B2B sales and loyalty
  • How MACH-X technology enables industry innovation

Make this Decoding the Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) dilemma

No other category faces the complex regulatory, distribution, shipping, and tax requirements as alcoholic beverages, due to the three-tiered system of distribution that prevents producers from selling DTC online. And while certain states permit direct wine, beer or spirits sales, producers are still bound by intricate interstate shipping rules that limit national service.

Fortunately, there are digital workarounds you can take advantage of today.

Partner with white label delivery services (quick commerce)

Alcohol brands can sell to consumers through intermediary marketplaces such as DoorDash and Instacart, and alcohol-specific services like Drizly, Minibar Delivery, Speakeasy, Thirstie and Barcart. Because these merchants do not hold their own liquor licenses, they fall outside of tied house rules – they can accept orders from a producer’s website and fulfill through their own network of retailers.

Some, like Speakeasy, let you embed their checkout within your brand sites for a seamless user experience. This way, your brand can keep valuable customer data and analytics “in-house,” while offloading orders and shipping.

This strategy is growing within CPG. For example, Unilever built their Ice Cream Shop storefront across Uber Eats, Postmates, DoorDash, Instacart and GrubHub to offer ice cream delivery within 30 minutes. Shoppers can build their baskets through the dedicated website and choose their preferred delivery service in checkout, or browse an Ice Cream Shop storefront natively within each respective app.

Similarly, Bud Light created a mobile app built specifically for on-demand ordering (the Bud Light Button). With API-first commerce technology, this concept can be extended to include social ads, SMS campaigns, messenger apps like WhatsApp and Telegram and QR codes on product labels.

Sell and ship direct (where you can)

Your individual branded storefronts may be able to sell Direct-to-Consumer DTC within specific states and regions under the right conditions. Using geolocation tools or adding a zip code field to your website’s age gate can enable or disable cart and checkout and customize your product pages to reflect what each customer is eligible to order online.

For example, shopping features for spirits can be enabled for a visitor from Kentucky and hidden for someone in California. Or a wine shopper in Montana could see Buy buttons only for wines under 16% Alcohol by Volume (ABV).

To handle this level of granular compliance, your commerce technology must enable you to handle complex business logic and update it fast each time a regulation changes. For example:

  • Taxation rules by product type ABV% and destination state
  • Shipping rules by product type, ABV% and destination state
  • Carrier rules (which carriers will accept which types of products, and under what conditions)
  • Per-shipment and annual shipping limits to individual customers
  • Fulfillment rules based on warehouse origin and destination address, connected to inventory. Each rule must be validated within checkout based on the destination address to ensure compliance. Your system must also comply with per-customer order limits, where they apply. For example, the maximum amount of wine a shipper can supply an individual Alabama resident cannot exceed 12 unopened cases per year.

Offer subscriptions and club memberships

Wineries relatively have the laxest laws around Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) shipping, and many vintners offer club memberships on subscription. This may involve fixed (pre-selected) or configurable bundles, where members choose their bottles each shipment, and the frequency of delivery. To support this use case, the digital commerce experience must support recurring billing, subscription management, product configuration and personalization.

Wineries that offer on-site events and vineyard tours also require online booking engines and may wish to integrate digital commerce with POS systems and mobile apps to enable digital transactions and wine club registrations during the tour experience.

On-site promotional events

Pop-up shops and brand booths at festivals, sporting events and other live venues also open a DTC commerce opportunity. For example, Heineken’s “Tap the Tap” app let customers scan QR codes to order beer using their mobile wallets during the F1 racing event in Singapore. Jack Daniels offered a similar feature through its app at its World Championship Invitational Barbecue event.

Capturing consumer data

Besides brand sites, mobile apps and campaign microsites are increasingly becoming part of the marketing mix. Even without direct checkouts, your digital portfolio can capture valuable customer data that helps better market to and segment consumers, develop competitive positioning strategies and even inform product development.

Account and loyalty

User accounts enable you to capture profile data and pair with loyalty programs award points for engagement and purchases across channels. Trending loyalty tactics include:

Register for coupons - Digital coupons with unique IDs can track consumer usage and attribute back to online and offline ad campaigns. Based on consumption habits, consumers can be retargeted with personalized follow-on promotions.

Receipt and QR scanning - Johnnie Walker lets you snap photos of purchase receipts or bottle label QR codes to collect points that can be exchanged for merchandise and other prizes. In the Netherlands, Heineken fans can scan receipts to earn credits to redeem fresh draft pours at participating pubs.

NFC cards - Moet-Hennessy issues NFC-enabled membership cards to VIPs that can be tapped at third party retailers for premium rewards.

Product quizzes - Collect consumer preferences with fun and informative quizzes that push data into their accounts.

Generative AI and interactive content - Bacardi’s BarGPT app generates cocktail recipes and food pairings. Users can enter spirits, ingredients, and themes to get a custom recipe and AI generated image in seconds and save them to their personal accounts or browse over 16,000 user generated creations. The app offers a Facebook Login option which can pull additional personal data upon registering.

Loyalty logic can be complex, and brands want flexibility to accommodate any number of promotions and conditions. A leading beer brand uses Infosys Equinox’ loyalty module to configure and manage earn, redeem, and forfeit capabilities down to the SKU, channel and individual member levels across 70 geographies. A headless loyalty microservice not only extends to any experience or touchpoint, but also enables custom admin dashboards for business user control (rather than reliance on IT).

Personalization

Consumer data can be used to personalize web experiences and channel marketing such as email, SMS and messenger apps like WhatsApp and Telegram. You can also ingest third party data from partner marketplaces and your customer intelligence cloud to further enrich customer profiles.

Building B2B capabilities

Like Direct-to-Consumer (DTC), producers face three-tier restrictions selling direct to liquor stores, pubs, and restaurants, but can leverage digital to better serve them while funneling orders through distributors (B2B2B).

B2B end-customers can benefit from account registry and loyalty programs through the portal, and distributors can benefit from online ordering and account management for streamlined operations.

B2B2B portals

Moving offline process online and supporting both distributors and their end-customers requires number of critical commerce capabilities, including:

  • Multi-catalog
  • Account and user types and permissions
  • Account and user-based pricing
  • Inventory
  • Search
  • Order management
  • Configure price quote
  • Promotions
  • B2B payments
  • Cart and checkout

It’s important that commerce is decoupled from legacy systems to ensure all front-end experiences can be customized for desktop and mobile and can integrate with business partner systems where required. Your requirements can and will change over time. Modular, API-driven microservices provide the flexibility and future-proofing your system needs.

B2B loyalty

Beyond the basics, many brands want personalization and loyalty services to enhance customer relationships and maximize revenue.

Liquor brands are using creative tactics to reward business partners. For example, Heineken awards retailers loyalty points by scanning the side of its cases. Other brands run gamified “challenges” to earn rewards for ordering specific products during a promotional period.

How MACH-X brings it all together

Infosys Equinox is a MACH-X (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless, and eXtensible) platform that’s flexible, fully composable and integrable with any enterprise system and digital touchpoint.

With microservices, you can:

  • Add commerce capabilities to your existing brand websites and mobile apps
  • Spin up unlimited e-stores for all brands and geos within your enterprise portfolio
  • Serve DTC, B2B and B2B2B experiences without separate platforms
  • Extend commerce and loyalty capabilities to web, mobile, marketplaces, social and Internet of Things
  • Fine-tune business logic to handle complex regulatory compliance at the geo, customer, or SKU level
  • Embed 3rd party capabilities like marketplace checkout
  • Integrate with enterprise systems including ERP, CRM, CMS, OMS, CDP, and POS
  • Develop new capabilities and bring to market fast
  • Standardize your solutions across brands and digital teams
  • Cart and checkout

Get in touch with us at contactus@infosysequinox.com to learn more about how headless microservices can support digital commerce transformation for your alcohol beverage brand.

Ready to Unlock Direct-To-Consumer and B2B Revenue Streams for Your Alcohol Brand?

Learn how Infosys Equinox can help you navigate complex regulations and leverage our MACH-X based composable commerce architecture to enable seamless e-commerce experiences for your brand.

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