Immune Health Supplements Aren’t Just a Pandemic-Era Trend
Remember the good ole’ days when health experts predicting an upcoming bad cold and flu season was the biggest worry to our immune health? Because of recency bias, it’s likely hard for most of us to detach the rise in consciousness around immune health from the coronavirus endemic. Surprisingly though, if you look back to consumer health surveys from late-2019, immune system support was a top priority. As an example, a global survey from the taste and nutrition company Kerry Group found that 63% of respondents chose immune system support, ahead of healthy bones and joints, digestive health, improve energy levels, and heart health support.
2020 = Immune Health
The cold, flu, and immunity market became arguably the most important topic of interest in 2020. According to the Nutritional Business Journal, that condition-specific supplement category grew at a staggering 72.3% YoY. What was once a seasonality fueled $3.4 billion supplement category, now transformed into a constant year-long pursuit that added more than $2 billion in incremental consumer spending. After that record setting growth, the cold, flu, and immunity supplement category declined 4.2% YoY in 2021 and it looks to be trending further downward based on various scan data excerpts that have been shared with me throughout the last few months.
So, with the high probability that the supplement category will see back-to-back years of declining sales trends, it’s natural to think consumers are less interested in immune health, right? It’s not a binary yes/no kind of thing. Correlation does not imply causation. Every consumer health-related survey that I’ve read in 2022 still shows strong interest in strengthening immunity. So, what’s going on in the immune health supplement market then?
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Evolved Health Goals
Attitudes toward health (including immune health) have now become broader and more protracted. Today, consumers are no longer just questioning their vulnerability to the different mutations of the coronavirus or the seasonal flu, but instead expanding their concern to what other long-term health problems they risk because of poor dietary and lifestyle choices. It’s important to remember that in a perfect world, we’d all have access to and regularly consume a balanced, nutrient-dense diet. So, hypothetically we shouldn’t need additional supplements to strengthen our immune system. However, reality is that not only do most of us fail to hit these daily nutrition goals, but we also have situations when we need more of certain nutrients than what we would natural be getting from food. That likely means condition-specific supplement sales have shifted in part to supporting general health, especially in the vitamin categories.
Functionally Convenient
I know this content has been mostly focused on the traditional caps/powders/pills supplement form factors, but you can’t talk about the immune health category without bringing up the functional food and beverage movement. Functional foods and beverages have been on fire well before 2020, but the “COVID-19 Effect” certainly helped catapult them towards a larger focus in the consumer’s mind. Because of that, consumers are now more likely to seek out food and beverage products that carry a variety of health and ingredient claims simultaneously, for efficacy and convenience purposes.
It’s a bit of a market flywheel effect though, as consumer interest around better supporting immune health spiked these last few years, it naturally caused the supply side of the market (aka CPG brands) to do two things to match the demand. The most logical way was that CPG brands launched products that aligned with demand-side innovation principles. The problem with this methodology was that supply chain chaos (mixed with the crazy retailing environment) wrecked speedy go-to-market plans.
So, instead of or in complement to launching new immune health focused functional foods or beverages, CPG brands sped up the process by “putting lipstick on a pig.” That basically means adjusting the packaging and/or marketing communications around existing products to callout features that were now more valuable from a purchase criteria standpoint. When done for the appropriate reasons, it’s smart business logic to recognize that consumers have been more attentive to product labeling and that a certain event caused a spike in those consumers to seek out functional food and drink products positioned around certain active ingredient claims.
Consumer Skepticism plays a role
I know we don’t want to relive these memories, but maybe hindsight will provide everyone 2020 clarity that there was too much fearmongering going on by media sources. All those unknowns and fears about the virus caused consumers to initially buy anything they could get their hands that mentioned supporting immune health. As more facts about the virus started bubbling to the surface and fear started subsiding, it provided the opportunity for consumers to make greater efforts to research different ingredients.
While almost all supplement and functional food and beverage brands were good actors during the pandemic era, consumers started noticing that a few bad actors didn’t have their best interests at heart and made misleading claims to capitalize on consumers eagerness to find instant health solutions. That shift from fear-based to factual-based buying shouldn’t be understated and most certainly caused a pullback in the overall market size. With that said, it’s a natural reaction of an overheated trendy market to clear out the riff raff and I predict it will end up providing a stronger foundation for future categorical growth.
Immune Health Growth Catalysts
So, recognizing that the increased focus on immune health is not just a short-term trend, what pushes the category growth even further? Just to piggyback off that last point about consumer skepticism, combating it could come with the combination of…
investing in consumer education to help build greater awareness and understanding for the category
increasing product and brand transparency overall
utilizing branded ingredients that afford strong scientific evidence on packaging to support claims
Another categorical growth catalyst surrounds the strong scientific evidence that has been coming out around the gut-immune axis. Our gut is estimated to house 70% of the body’s immune cells, so supporting a healthy gut can have downstream effects on immunity. Taking those types of multifunctional approaches to product innovation aligns well with shifts in the consumer market towards overall health and wellness. So, I’d expect more condition-specific supplement mashups to happen, such as stress support, sleep support, and mitigation of inflammation.
Finally, I think the immune health category will benefit from the growing popularity of wearable technology and the normalization/acceptance of in-home health testing. What gets measured gets managed, right?
Final Thoughts
What are my thoughts around the long-term outlook for the immune health category?
The “COVID-19 Effect” undoubtedly pulled forward the demand for products a few years (which has now normalized), but this period more importantly changed consumer perception around immune health. That shift from only supporting your immune health seasonally to now making it a year-round pursuit is a big deal. Maybe the legacy immune ingredients with high consumer awareness or played out formulation approaches won’t see massive sales surges again in the near-term future and that’s OK. But it’s the massive wave of attention placed on immune health and investment put towards innovation that will open new opportunities…that’s exciting to think about and I predict it will provide strong categorical market growth.