With the effects of the pandemic taking shape, E-commerce and online shopping became the global norm. During this watershed movement, the sector witnessed efficiencies in delivery time, production, availability of products, and overall growth in all segments of the industry.
Post the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a stark rise in awareness regarding health, wellbeing, and nutrition. The pandemic has invariably inspired people to become more conscious about their health. This in-turn has aided in boosting the online healthcare supplements industry/ business. To map the significant growth of e-commerce and online shopping in India, Assiduus, a fast-growing AI-powered cross-border E-commerce Accelerator dedicated to helping D2C brands launch, scale and grow across global E-commerce marketplaces by enabling their digital commerce through end-to-end distribution and supply chain management, recently conducted a nationwide survey.
The survey primarily highlighted that buyers were shopping extensively through digital mediums for health supplements as compared to the pre-COVID times. The respondents of this survey lived in metropolitan, tier-2, or tier-3 cities across the country of India, with an age group extending from age 18 through 60. The survey revealed that over 75% of the participants were willing to purchase a Health supplement product from E-commerce marketplace with popular choices of trying a health supplement being hair loss, skin concerns, and overall health.
With GenZ emerging as the largest surveyed group, the report stated that the top motivator to purchase a healthcare product online was Recommendations (22%), followed by reviews (20%), Brand (19%), ingredients (17%), etc. This corroborates the fact that people commit effort to research and learn about ingredients and the availability of data about the product increasing user awareness.
The Indian nutraceutical sector has also piqued considerably one-commerce platforms like Amazon in the recent years. With nutraceutical brands clocking over 40% sales on Amazon, the survey revealed that gummies were the most popular format that respondents were purchasing. Over 40% users voted for gummy for Hair concerns and 42% for skin concerns while tablets were preferred for resolving sleep and anxiety concerns.
“With Consumers turning increasingly health-conscious, they are constantly seeking to improve their health by procuring more such products online. The exhaustive range of products which one can buy and the availability of information, combined with the ease of purchasing such products is steering a sizable portion of the e-commerce sales. Our survey has established that consumers will only increase their online spending on healthcare goods and devices in these transformed times. Therefore, it is safe to say that Healthcare brands must explore the large number of opportunities in the E-commerce marketplace, as platforms like Amazon are here to stay,” reflected Dr. Somdutta Singh, CEO & Founder, Assiduus Global Inc.
The algorithm on social media applications personalizes advertisements for each user to ensure that it reaches the consumers who are ready to purchase the product. The survey found that 45% of the respondents who participated in their survey said they were aware about a healthcare product because of an advert they saw on social media.
