Feeling Good: How Wellness Will Look Like in 2030?
Consumers are loosening their purse strings more on wellness than ever before. Now, wellness represents a $1.5 Tn industry worldwide, growing 5–10% annually.
New wellness services and products are entering the market every day. This piece underscores (and discusses) the most prominent wellness categories among consumers.
Let’s look into the crystal ball.
Health
Perhaps the most conventional category pertaining to wellness, health goes beyond medicine and supplements to include personal health trackers and customer healthcare devices. People are looking after things mostly on their own, so they’d turn to a doctor only when it’s necessary.
The concept of medical devices is shifting from the doctor’s cabin into the home. There’s an upsurge in focused, data-powered health care, smartphone apps to help people effortlessly book their appointments or get the required prescriptions, and devices that help them track their health and symptoms during appointments.
Furthermore, today’s pharmaceutical products will become tomorrow’s over-the-counter (OTC), easily accessible items.
Fitness
Several people grapple with maintaining their pre-COVID-19 fitness scales when they can’t go to their gyms as often or engage in sports as before. A survey revealed that most people exercised less after the pandemic-induced lockdowns started, and many didn’t return to their earlier workout scales even though the lockdowns were eased or lifted.
That said, fitness goals keep up. Innovative offerings that cater to the customers’ at-home needs have grown tremendously over the last year. Moreover, we’ll also see a next leg regarding offering people the ability to monitor their fitness.
“How do I know I’m making any progress?” Tracking will play a pretty significant role in motivation, guidance, and training.
Nutrition
People are reading a lot more product labels — that’ll persist. Now, they want food and beverages that not only taste good but also help them achieve their dietary goals. Less sugar, more jaggery powder.
In fact, about 35% of consumers in the US, the UK, and Germany are consuming plant-based milk, and half of them began in 2020. What’s more, above a third of consumers globally will “probably” or “definitely” look to increasing their spending on diet plans, nutrition apps, and subscription food services over the coming year.
That’s quite a tectonic shift — pretty faster than usual — in how we consume, and this trend will keep on.
Appearance
Over the decade ahead, beauty retailers will cover a vast amount of service-oriented offerings. People can receive injectable services if they want to plump up their lips or cheeks. They can receive clinical treatments, including micro-needling and microdermabrasion that (until now) have been done only in a medical spa or by a dermatologist.
Additionally, they may be able to get tattooed at the same parlor where they’re purchasing their makeup, as it’s all about how people want to express themselves.
Sleep
About 50% of customers worldwide look for more services and products that fulfill the demand for better quality shut-eye. Conventional sleep medications, such as melatonin, now have company — app-driven sleep trackers and other sleep-improving products (for instance, gravity blankets and blackout curtains).
Moreover, new offerings are hitting the stores — mattresses equipped with sensors below them that tell how much you’ve spent in bed. Imagine your sleep data connected to your treadmill or exercise bike so that when you hop on it, you’ll get a class devised for anyone who’s facing sleeping issues. Or imagine your fridge beginning to give suggestions to you based on your sleep data — “Don’t drink sodas,” for instance.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness — and the pursuit of mindfulness — will become a core aspect of how we live our lives. More than half of customers want to triage mindfulness more, while a similar fraction reckons that they wish for more mindfulness products and services. Now, people are more familiar with mindfulness as a service and an offering — and technology and wearables will have a considerable role here.
Fast forward to 2030, a professional’s usual day kick-starts with either an online or offline meditation or yoga class. After work, the wearable device would say, “Hey, you need to cut yourself some slack.” It’s easy to imagine these possibilities.
