SAKE CONSUMER ANALYSIS
4
CONSUMER AWARENESS AND
PERCEPTIONS OF SAKE IN
THE UK, USA AND CHINA
WORDS: ANTONY MOSS AIWS MW / SAKE SAMURAI
Accompanying the development and launch of the WSET Level 3 Award in Sake, the
WSET commissioned research from Wine Intelligence to use its Vinitrack consumer surveys
to investigate perceptions of sake among regular wine drinkers in three key markets:
the UK,USA and China.
The surveys occurred in late 2014, and focussed on people
who drink wine regularly (in China, this was limited to upper
middle class consumers of imported wine within Mainland
China). The results showed a lively interest in sake in all three
markets, but some striking differences in how familiar wine
consumers are with sake, and how frequently they consume it.
Extrapolating from the survey samples (1000 responses in the
UK, 1000 in China, 2000 in the USA), the results suggest
that of the 29 million regular wine drinkers in the UK, 14%
(4 million) have had sake at least once in the last year, but
as many as 61% (18 million) have never even tried sake.
Consumers in the USA are generally much more familiar
with sake, with 32% (28 million, out of 90 million regular
wine drinkers) saying they had consumed sake at least once
in the last year and 39% having never tried it. 15% of US
wine drinkers had consumed sake more than three times
in the last year, more double the 6% of UK wine drinkers
that consumed sake on multiple occasions in a year. Sake
is much more widely consumed in China, where only 17%
had never tried it and the majority (57% of the 38 million
consumers of imported wine) had consumed sake within
the last year. Most of these sake drinkers consumed sake
on several occasions a year.
The survey investigated the reasons why some wine drinkers
do not drink sake. In all three markets, lack of knowledge
was cited as the leading reason for avoiding sake (51% in
the UK, 44% in the USA and 56% in China). In all three
markets, about a quarter of wine drinkers had tried sake in
the more distant past but not returned to it. The number was
slightly higher in the USA (29%) and China (28%) than the
UK (25%), and in the UK a much higher proportion (61%)
had never experienced sake.
This perhaps explains why ‘do not like the way it tastes’
was the second most common reason in the USA (41%)
and China (49%) for wine drinkers not consuming sake,
whereas in the UK this reason was edged into third place by
‘it is hard to find places to buy sake’ (37% in the UK, 30%
in USA and 40% in China).
Other reasons given for not consuming sake were the
relatively high price (28% in UK, 28% in the USA, 24% in
China), confusion about the styles (21% in UK, 24% in the
USA, 48% in China) and the labels being confusing and
hard to understand (19% in the UK, 18% in the USA and
35% in China).
This suggests that although helpful work could be done to
make labels readable to non-Japanese speakers, it needs to be
accompanied by a wider understanding of sake in general, and
greater confidence about the styles and categories. In China,
most Kanji characters used on Sake labels are familiar - even
if they are pronounced differently, and can have different
nuances of meaning -but this familiarity provides limited
help to many Chinese consumers when they try to buy the
product without confidently understanding the styles.
MUSEUM OF SAKE JOURNAL 32