Fitbit’s Heart Rate Monitor Might Not Work, But Their Marketing Does
Should products meet their marketing or label claims? How closely? What happens when they don’t?
These questions are partially philosophical, but in healthcare they’re also legal. Theranos recently learned that companies can’t make health claims without evidence. Now Fitbit could be learning that lesson too. At Labdoor, we’ve seen the same thing play out in supplements. Sometimes companies make claims that they simply can’t live up to, and it usually ends with a lawsuit.
Nobody’s denying that Fitbit is a commercial success. They went from a crowd-sourced startup to an $8 billion industry leader in just a few years. But recently the quality of some their products has come into question.
Currently, Fitbit sells three wearables that measure heart rate: the Blaze, Charge HR, and Surge. Over the past few years, critical customer reviews floated around the net, yet established reviewers like Consumer Reports gave them very favorable ratings.
In January, a class-action lawsuit was filed alleging that Fitbit had defrauded consumers. The lawyers claimed that Fitbit’s heart rate monitors weren’t accurate. Following the lawsuit, Consumer Reports retested the products against a chest-strap heart monitor and found some discrepancies at higher heart rates. Now the three Fitbits have been examined in a controlled study funded by the plaintiff’s law firm that claims the devices are both inaccurate and inconsistent at measuring heart rate, especially during high activity like sprinting. It’s created some turmoil for Fitbit’s stock value, but perhaps even more for the wearable industry as a whole.
While sales are growing, consumer satisfaction issues have plagued wearables for years. There are reports that one-third of new adoptees abandon their devices within 6 months, and that half of those with activity monitors don’t use the devices anymore. It’s anyone’s guess whether this is due more to false marketing claims or just human nature. Now Google is developing a wearable specifically for clinical research, but it might come at a time when wearables are carrying a lot of baggage.
That’s why the wearable industry needs better regulation, either by a government health agency, or through established private industry standards. It should be clear that regulation through lawsuits isn’t sustainable or beneficial for companies or consumers. Standards could set a bar for basic minimum expectations, and prevent customers from feeling burned.
This is Labdoor’s issue with supplements too. We’ve seen too many lawsuits for products that couldn’t meet their marketing claims. It creates a supplement trend boom-and-bust cycle of hype and mistrust that’s been destructive to our industry, as the National Business Journal concluded in 2015. It’s our opinion that better marketing practices would be more sustainable for both industries in the long run.
