Wellness – Health & Nutrition is the Popular Niche in MLM

“Wellness industry is going to be of trillion dollar…” That’s what renowned economist Paul Zane Wilzer said. He also had added that: “what we are starting to see is an emergence of a wellness distribution business; a business of people educating people about products and services that will improve their health. They develop customer relationships that cause the customer to go back to the distributor of that product for more and more information on food and health. In other words, Network Marketing or Multi-Level Marketing.” In answer to the question: “So how will the wellness community, from your view, be able to connect with the consumer? What opportunities are there, in this new economy, to connect with those people who are reaching for wellness products?”

This statement is in the process of proving itself true. As per the report published by WFDSA, in 2014, Wellness stands second next to cosmetics & personal care with 29% of the sales worldwide.

Global sales
Source: WFDSA

 

In India, Wellness is the topmost category in MLM industry, with 47% of share as per KPMG report.

 

marketshare
Source: KPMG Report

 

Previously people had the idea about the wellness products as nutritional items for sports people and athletes but that idea has changed and the various reasons behind these growth of wellness industry is primarily due to –

 

healthy

Awareness among people about the need for a healthy lifestyle. Before of this awareness, notion of the health care industry was that which catered to the supply of the products which are required when the person gets sick. But by the emergence of Wellness sector, we get those products which keeps a person fit, physically and mentally even when he/she is not sick. And people believe that these products avoid falling sick and improve your overall health, fitness and nutritional level of your body. This consequently improves your life. For e.g. nutritional supplements for vitamins, omega 3 etc. different for men, women and children.

spiked growth

As mentioned in FICCI report, the spiked growth in India is because it is prevalent in our country since ancient times with Yoga and Ayurveda. Both the ancient health practices have put forward the concept of mental and physical wellness which was practised by the elite people of our country. But as the time changed, with the changing lifestyles of the people and the need for the quality life, the same concept with new dimensions got reinforced into the lives of people.

Other factors are as in PWC reports:

 Increased Consumer Spend

Rising Competition in the Wellness industry

Rise in funds

Spread in tier 2 and tier 3 cities

 

There are no doubts that this industry is going to thrive, as all people wish the best health for themselves and their families. Now how does MLM benefit from the growth of Wellness industry?

The best advantage of MLM is that you can directly engage with your customer. This engagement includes education and awareness about your product, how can it be beneficial to them. When a customer gets face to face convincing knowledge about the product’s usefulness, he will definitely end up buying from the marketer rather than from the shelf of a store.

Personalized service

Home delivery

Getting informed about the related products and their advantages from the same company on regular basis

The wellness products are strictly regulated by Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) in US and NABH in India.

In India, Amway, Herbalife, Medicare, Hindustan Lever Network and Forever Living are the major players of Wellness category in MLM. In our country, when the direct marketing was in nascent stage, main category was educational products, but as seen in the graph above, that has changed to Wellness.

Chavi Hemanth who was the Secretary-General of IDSA till Oct 2015 has said that “Wellness is the category which will grow in Direct Selling Industry. This is because it provides a channel to the customers in which these products are well demonstrated and explained in a face to face manner to them. In the Indian market, the demand for wellness products like health supplements, meal replacements and health drinks, etc. has increased and will keep on increasing.”

Further explaining the reason behind this new trend she had mentioned “Those under the age group of 60 – 80 years require health products as they are more prone to illness. People under the age group 30 – 50 years today have become proactive and concerned about their health.”

“Even when we observe children in school, we will find that now a days maximum children are found overweight and obese as compared to children found in earlier days. This shows the gradual increase in the consumption for the health products,” she had added.

Amway India too made a note that this category has grown strong over the years. Nutrilite – product of Amway is highly popular and it alone contributes to 60% of their turnover! Seeing this as fantastic opportunity to contribute in the health of the people they have added various other products like ageing supplement for liver and bone health.

According to nutritionists, over the years with changing lifestyles, eating habits of the people have deteriorated and there have been lack of exercise due to extremely fast and stressful life. But with such products, there is a growing awareness among the people to attain a healthy life without visiting a doctor.

With globalisation, wellness industry has extremely spread around the world. In addition, due to its nature of the products, there lies a huge opportunities for MLM.

Combining the awareness of industry trends, product trends and the technology advancement, one can see to achieve dreams of contributing to the world in MLM industry. Ventaforce has and is providing solutions to various network companies in this product category who has turned out to be highly successful and leaders.

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