Almost everyone has some experience with some type of supplements, even if the last ones you took were gummies shaped like a cartoon family. However, with thousands of products on the market, the process of choosing the right supplements, based on personal health needs, can be overwhelming. As consumers are shifting their focus towards a more holistic approach to healthcare, are you developing and offering products/services with the same view?
Factors like age, gender, fitness level, and geographic location can mean that a person needs more or less of a given nutrient; family history or specific short-term goal, such as weight management or having trouble sleeping, also influence their purchasing decision. Below, we shed light on how today’s consumers evaluate the supportive role of supplements. Then we’re going to highlight a few supplement basics, no matter where your customers may be on the supplementation journey.
5 Deciding Factors During Consumers’ Supplement Shopping
1. What is missing from their diets?
Vitamins, minerals, and a variety of micronutrients are crucial for keeping us in good health. Even though maintaining a diverse and balanced diet should give us all the nutrients we need, more and more evidence has indicated that modern eating is far from varied – or even close to what is considered a healthy diet. To the rescue come vitamin and mineral supplements; they can be useful for filling in gaps in our diet. Dietary supplements may be particularly helpful for those who cannot consume or absorb certain nutrients well, have higher needs because of a condition or disease state, or are following specific restrictive diets due to their cultural backgrounds.
⬖ Read also: Supplementing According to Religious Practices: Kosher and Halal Certified Ingredients
To decide which types of supplement products to purchase and consume, health-conscious customers first educate themselves on what essential vitamins and nutrients to look out for, carefully assess their diet, then find out what they’re missing from it. Common deficiencies include vitamin D and vitamin B12. And if one simply cannot work fatty fish into their diet once or twice a week, they may want to add fish oil (omega-3) supplement.
2. What are they looking to do with a supplement?
Vitamins and minerals supplements fulfill people’s general nutrition needs, but to create a successful product launch that drives sales, first we have to understand: which life goals are our consumers aiming for?
Consumer interest in proactively managing their health has continued to evolve in the wake of COVID-19, and what these shoppers are asking for right now is an approach to the pursuit of wellness that empowers them to choose what’s best for their own goals—whether that’s focusing on mental well-being, improved vitals, weight management, sleep quality, or environmental sustainability advocacy.
⬖ Grasp more customer trends and expectations in this post: Find Ingredients Bulk Supply You Need: Full Ingredient List by Klee
3. Does your product labels convey quality and safety?
When shopping for dietary supplements, consumers can be (understandably) really picky. After doing their homework and knowing what supplements to look for, how do people decide which specific products to add to their regimens? In the meantime, since many health and wellness customers buy from brands they already know, what can newcomers do in order to stand out?
A crucial thing to keep in mind here is that successful product labeling captures consumers’ attention and earns you trust. When online and retail customers examine product labels, they want to know which ones are actually worth the money—that is, dietary supplements that have been tested for quality, purity, and potency.
⬖ Read also: Dietary Supplement Labels: Inside Scoop You Didn’t Know You Needed
As a rule of thumb, label claims and health benefits of the best supplements products are demonstrated by clinical studies. Research-backed effectiveness and safety, independent third-party tests and certifications, and other product attributes valued by specific customer segments, such as Non-GMO, organic, or free from allergens, all help communicate an indication of the quality of a supplement product.
4. Which life stages are they experiencing?
Another thing to consider: are your product offerings life-stage specific? It goes without saying that wellness is personal and that our bodies change over time. Whether your customer is a frequent supplement user or a complete beginner, about to take individual vitamins or a multi-nutrient formula, one size doesn’t fit all in every decade of life. Our body needs different levels of certain nutrients nutrient and can increase or decrease based on age, sex, activity levels, and illness or disease.
For example, iron requirements often decrease after menopause; what meets our protein needs at age 25 would not work for us at age 65. Your customer may have taken a generic multivitamin as a kid, abandoned the routine in their teens, and began to consider taking goal-specific supplements to start laying a foundation for their future selves. This is why personalized vitamin subscription services like Care/of and Ritual have been reaching mainstream traction.
5. Do your supplement products fit their lifestyles?
Health and wellness shoppers want to make the best purchases to support their lifestyles. They think of taking supplements as part of their overall efforts to make themselves better in some way—stronger, healthier, clearer thinking, more attractive. Under this context, supplement products are being rebranded as part of a wellness/self-care lifestyle and more importantly, being promoted and sold around the goal of attaining a certain aspirational lifestyle.
For example, rather than simply attracting customers from a skincare point of view, a collagen brand could strategically celebrate a broader value, such as confidence or blooming from within, to back up its brand and product propositions. An athleisure wear brand, on the other hand, might sell supplements for joint health to support active-lifestyle customers in their fitness goals, such as weight training and marathon running.
Supplement Essentials for Daily Support and Occasional Use
Now, what if your customer is new to dietary supplements and doesn’t know where to begin? Where should they start?
To a novice consumer, shopping for a high-quality dietary supplement can be trickier than it seems. With so many options out there to sift through, each featuring different ingredients and purported benefits. Also, as we discussed earlier, everyone’s wellness needs and personal goals are unique to them, so no two routines will be the same.
That said, there are a handful of supplements to have on hand for building a strong nutritional foundation. Newbies and pros alike can benefit from these supplement essentials:
Antioxidants and Immunity Support
Even with pandemic restrictions lifting and cases ebbing and flowing, immunity has become part of the everyday shopper’s lexicon as a result of COVID. Immunity staples such as vitamin C and D, Zinc, ashwagandha, and elderberries have therefore enjoyed their sales boost in food and beverage.
A well-functioning immune system depends on a balanced healthy diet over time. We can’t just eat an orange or grapefruit or pop a vitamin pill and expect one quick burst of vitamin C to prevent a cold. Sadly, too many of us don’t eat enough of the fresh fruits, vegetables, and other whole foods we need to keep ourselves healthy year-round. Dietary supplements featuring antioxidant support ingredients, such as grape skin extract (resveratrol), can help in this instance.
Multivitamins
How can we hit nutritional goals when life gets busy and we’re not (never!) swapping lettuce for fries? Consumers nowadays turn to multivitamin supplements as insurance policies to help them feel their best.
Multivitamins aren’t a surefire way to get what we need to thrive, as it’s hard to beat what whole foods provide. Still, taking a multi complements a typical (sometimes unbalanced) diet with necessary vitamins and minerals, building a stronger foundation for better health. Another reason to consider consuming a multi is that some nutrients are best absorbed in pill form, including vitamin D and folic acid.
Probiotics and Gut Health Supplements
Have you ever had to make a “gut-wrenching” decision under pressure? Or were you ever so anxious seeing someone that you had butterflies in your stomach? Modern lifestyles cause stress, and research has shown that stress can negatively affect our digestive tract.
This is why we suggest starting by checking off the boxes for digestive health with a daily probiotic. Probiotics are live organisms that support a balance of “good” and “bad” bacteria in your gut microbiome. Its primary function is to support your digestive health, which helps prevent stomach disturbances like occasional bloating, constipation, and digestive discomfort.
Another way of keeping and maintaining a healthier gut is to consume probiotics-containing fermented foods like yogurt, kefir, kimchi, and kombucha. While your consumers don’t necessarily drink kombucha every day, it’s loaded with enzymes and live organisms that help restore balance to the digestive system. Further, when transformed into the form of powder, kombucha with its prominent health positioning is no longer limited to functional drinks but a wide spectrum of digestive health solutions.
⬖ Get inspired by these kombucha innovations: Kombucha But a Concept: 6 Brands Brewing Probiotic Premix, Caps, and Tablets
Ready, Set, Supplement!
When it comes to consumers’ supplement regimens and health needs, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Brands and companies need to understand the overall landscape of health and nutrition for their consumers instead of focusing solely on their specific categories, as they need to be part of the wider lifestyle choices and habits consumers have when it comes to their health.
If you’re interested in any of the ingredients we mentioned and discover more, head on over to our Ingredients & OEM page, or Contact Us to see if our offering is right for you.
Reference:
https://www.naturesway.com/articles/how-to-adjust-your-supplement-routine-with-age
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/consumer-packaged-goods/our-insights/feeling-good-the-future-of-the-1-5-trillion-wellness-market
https://thriva.co/hub/vitamins
https://www.hsis.org/
https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2013/08/should-you-take-dietary-supplements
https://www.verywellhealth.com/dietary-supplement-methodology-5219554
https://www.pennmedicine.org/updates/blogs/health-and-wellness/2020/february/the-truth-about-supplements
https://www.heart.org/en/news/2021/03/24/as-fermented-foods-rise-in-popularity-heres-what-experts-say
https://gilbertlab.com/immune-system/