A report from the Kearney Consumer Institute (KCI) dove deep into what health and wellness means for consumers, including what their health aspirations are and how they pursue them.
While health and wellness is a big, challenging, multifaceted, and nebulous area to dissect, KCI's Q3 2024 brief, Stayin' alive: The blur of health and wellness, examines the consumer's highly personal and emotional response to health, identifies the gap between what brands say about health and what consumers actually think, and provides guideposts to brands on how to better understand their customers' lifestyles around health, and how to better fit into it.
The research found that with nutrition, exercise, sleep, and other habits they've acknowledged as healthy, consumers make different trade-offs and often struggle to prioritize. For example, the KCI asked consumers which they thought was healthier, Ozempic or body positivity messaging; 90% chose the latter. And, while 62% and 55%, respectively, identified exercise and sleep as the top factors in their health, these are among the first things to be neglected if consumers have a busy week.
The KCI report advises brands not to see themselves as the source of truth on health, as consumers continually make personalized choices and trade-offs. Meet consumers where they are: if health or wellness is part of a brand's trajectory or vision, the brand should work on improving access to and choice of healthier products. Finally, brands should focus on lifestyle rather than product or category-level choices.
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Other findings in the KCI Q3 2024 brief include ways companies can understand consumers' sentiments around their health and wellness needs, including:
- Mental and physical health can be at odds
- The fact that there is no common agreement on what health is
- Consumer acknowledgement that it can be difficult to consistently prioritize health
- Health is a personal, emotional, and complicated motivator
- Healthy living still feels like a sacrifice or challenge
- "Health" exemplifies nearly every consumer challenge
"Health matters to people—calling it a trend oversimplifies it," said KCI lead, Katie Thomas. "Consumers prioritize health, but also know how to make healthy choices. What we want to get across to brands is that they need to understand the complexity of consumers'—and particularly Americans'—relationship to health and wellness. Health crossing over into wellness and self-care opens the door for trade-offs and rationalizations, such as going for a facial (self-care) rather than a workout at the gym (health). Brands that understand these nuances can walk the fine line of providing added health value while not radically changing their core offerings."
