Exploring Opportunities for US Expansion for Champagne

Challenge

Understanding a luxury champagne brands’ potential to break through and connect with existing bubbles and spirits drinkers while assessing price sensitivity, and cannibalization risk within their current portfolio.

Our client came to us looking to bring a popular luxury champagne brand from Europe to US shores, and wanted to understand if such a launch currently made sense for the US market. To do this, they wanted an understanding of the Champagne category within the North American market, especially around current bubbles occasions and perceptions.

Approach

We started our research by conducting a contextual audit so that we could position the research within the culture at large, as well as the category, by remining previous work from our clients, and conducting desk research. We supplemented this with expert interviews, to help sharpen our understanding of the Champagne category in the US, both on and off premise. Then, to find out more about consumer perceptions in the category, and to test initial brand positioning statements for the brand, we conducted 5 triad interviews, speaking with a combination of spirts drinkers, and bubbles enthusiasts across NYC, LA and Miami.

Impact

This research informed our client of the unique challenges they would face when launching their product abroad, and offered recommendations on how to move forward, by identifying key areas for optimization.