Vranken said the very essence of champagne marketing – as a drink quaffed at parties and weddings – needs to be re-evaluated to reflect the new normal: Fewer festivities and a lack of celebratory group events.
I understand you can get a bottle of Champagne for $20, but it’s probably iffy at best. When most of your entry-level good stuff is $50+, your average Joe isn’t going to pop a bottle on Tuesday night with a burger regardless of whether it’s natty/organic.
In the end they are making an agricultural commodity product. When demand shifts, they’ll feel it, and can either adapt by changing prices to find the new market clearing point, or sit on unsold stocks, while their former customers discover substitute commodities.
Somehow the Champenois convinced themselves that marketing/positioning changed their products attributes to make it truly special, as if was a mobile phone chip or life saving drug, which can command real economic rents.