What's New | HartBeat While the past 200 years have seen endless fads come and go, the world of health & wellness is here to stay. Check out our Road to Wellness infographic! Launch» September 1, From Eating Occasion to Store Shelf August 25, Oprah, Food and Us August 18, 3 Shopper Marketing Myths

home : hartbeat : gmdc-wellness-shoppers-and-channel-preference

10.21.2009

“HartBeat” is The Hartman Group's FREE online newsletter, providing insight, analysis, information and strategy to give business leaders the knowledge and vision to build sustainable brands.

---

FREE Webinar Express^TM
Private Label 2010

Ordinary people do not eat ingredients or nutrients or platforms or mission statements—they eat food.

Join us for this free 15-minute Webinar Express^TM Culture of Food and find out why culture matters. This webinar introduces our Culture of Food model which grounds consumer orientations toward food and eating occasions into a broader framework of food culture.

Register today! >>

---

Archives »
Click here for an archive of past HartBeat articles

GMDC: Wellness Shoppers and Channel Preference

A ground-breaking new report by GMDC, Consumer Shopping Habits for Wellness and Environmentally Conscious Lifestyles, was launched at their Health Beauty Wellness Conference held September 11-14, 2009 in Orlando, Florida. The report (research conducted by The Hartman Group for GMDC) presents the current state of the health, wellness and environmentally conscious lifestyle market and identifies the trends most relevant for manufacturers and retailers in the general merchandise and health, beauty and wellness space. Select highlights from the report are reprinted here by special permission of GMDC.

GMDC (Global Marketing Development Center) is the premier non-profit global trade association dedicated to serving General Merchandise and Health Beauty Wellness retailers, wholesalers and suppliers.

Wellness Shoppers and Channel Preferences

Consumers are relying on a multitude of retail channels for their Health and Wellness (hereinafter “H+W”) shopping. However, different consumer wellness segments have preferred channels for H+W purchases. Drug, mass and club stores appeal most strongly to Periphery H+W consumers (those shoppers least involved in H+W), grocery stores appeal most strongly to Mid-level H+W consumers and specialty grocery and specialty drug stores appeal most strongly to Core H+W consumers (those shoppers most involved in H+W lifestyles and shopping).

In Figure 1, various channels are shown with both a “center of gravity” showing where their appeal is most intense in the context of H+W, as well as “tails” that show, generally, how wide the appeal extends (though to a less intense degree) into adjacent shopper segments of H+W. For instance, Mainstream Drug appeals most intensely to Periphery H+W shoppers concerned with convenience and oriented toward more traditional OTC products (and Rx) in their understanding of “health.” However, Mainstream Drug’s appeal also extends into the Mid-level, as they also offer some level of products that appeal to Mid-level consumers (e.g., some levels of specialty supplements are typically present in most Mainstream Drug stores). Please note that below we detail six channels, adding “specialty” versions of both grocery and drug, due to the meaningful differences in category/SKU mix found in such retailers in comparison to the “mainstream” versions of those channels. Definitions of each channel appear below the chart.

Download to read the full story, which provides an overview of retail channels and categories purchased including:

• Grocery
• Specialty Grocery
• Mass
• Drug
• Specialty Drug
• Club

Download the white paper, GMDC: Wellness Shoppers and Channel Preference >>

---