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Purchase Motivations: Woman Ages 45-60
Online presence of the supplement, exposure to advertising, and social media are the major motivating factors for women ages 45-60 to choose and buy health products such as supplements.
General reasons that motivate dietary supplement intake
1. LifeStyle
- Lifestyle changes motivate less than 10% of dietary supplement users to take vitamins & minerals and herbal supplements.
- Exercise habits have a significant relationship with supplement use. 56% of those who do high-impact exercise and 54% of those who do moderate exercise take supplements.
- Performance and energy boost is the motivating factor of more than 20% of the vitamins & minerals and herbal users.
2. Doctors recommendation
- About 20% of vitamins and minerals supplement takers are motivated by their physicians
3. Personal belief
- A personal belief that dietary supplements will improve overall health and wellness is the major factor that motivates the buyers of dietary supplements.
- Over 60% of vitamin and mineral takers believe that these supplements improve their overall health and wellness.
Motivating Factors of women ages 45-60 to choose health products and supplements
online presence
- Women age 45 to 60 who buy health products and supplements prefer purchasing them online rather than in offline marketplaces; hence, the online presence of a product is a motivating factor, with a preference for subscription options and specialized sellers.
- Online vitamins and supplement sales have increased by 40 percent, which is a growth of 12% faster than the average e-commerce sales.
- According to a Seattle-based retailer on Amazon, 77% of all vitamin and supplement sales are made through online channels.
- 54% of online supplement buyers are women.
- Generation X (age 45-54) are the most active online shoppers.
- Baby boomers (age 55-75) are also starting to adapt to the online purchasing trend.
- There is a preference for vitamins and supplements with a subscription model or from specialized sellers like Vitacost.
- A subscription model, according to Slice Intelligence’s principal analyst Ken Cassar, can be a major motivating factor for consumers to maintain compliance.
- Specialized sellers:
- Online buyers prefer specialized sellers for health products other than Amazon.
- When excluding Amazon, 80% of vitamins and supplement purchase are made from specialized sellers.
- Among this 80% of purchase from specialized sellers, Vitacost accounts for 22.9%, followed by 13.2% from Swanson Vitamins and 12.9% by Puritan's Pride.
Advertising
- Television advertising is one of the major motivating factors that fuel the intake of supplements for women of age 45-60.
- Exposure from zero to the mean number of ads increases the consumption of vitamin supplement by 2% in printed ad forms; whereas it is 1.4% in exposure to television ads.
- When there is a 100% increase in exposure of printed ads, probability of antioxidants consumption increases by 2.5 percentage points and Vitamin B consumption increases by 4.16 percentage points.
- Broadcast TV is the biggest source of entertainment for Gen X, and they’re most likely to know about new brands via TV ads.
- According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey, adults age 45 and older spend more time watching TV than their younger counterparts (45-54 spend 2.64 hours and 55-64 spend 3.24 hours) and women spend 2.5 hours per day watching TV.
Impact of social media
- Social media is a major motivating factor for purchasing health products for buyers in between 45-60 years old.
- According to a PwC survey, 41% of social media users said that the information they get from social media impacts their healthcare decisions.
- Pharmaceutical companies share case information, photos, outcomes (with permission), patient reviews and testimonials on social media.
- Gen X spend almost 2 hours a day on social media but their online activities are more intent and purpose browsing.
- 28% of Gen X encounter new brands online and one-third of them research brands through social media.
- 50.4% of Gen X (age34-54) and 55% of baby boomers (55+) research on brands through social media prior to purchasing.
Useful findings
- Among the 49% of adults in the U.S. that take supplements 54% are women.
- 50% of adults between age 40-59 and 67% over age 60 take supplements.
Research Strategy
To find the purchase motivations of women age 45 to 60 when it comes to buying health products such as supplements, we began our research by going through studies and surveys, such as in Research Gate, in the hopes of getting precompiled information. We also included specific websites, such as JAMA, BMC Complementary, Alternative Medicine, and press releases from academic journals focused on health products, supplements, and other products. However, most of the information we found were on general reasons to buy or take supplements rather than motivations to buy/choose a product over another. From the same reports, we were able to extract benefits or factors that play a major role in purchasing health supplements, such as online presence, advertisements, and impact from social media, but unfortunately these sources do not specifically focus on women of age 45 to 60.
With these listed factors that impact purchasing health supplements, we attempted to triangulate the motivators for women ages 45-60 to buy health products and supplements. Hence, we directed our research for consumer trends of the desired demographic. The focus was mainly on Gen X and baby boomers. With this strategy, we found several sources that support our first finding that online presence, ads, and social media play a major role in health supplement purchases.
According to the Rakuten Intelligene report, e-commerce plays a major role in sales of health supplements and the majority of buyers are women, and KPMG's report suggests that Gen X and baby boomers are attracted towards online purchasing, from which we triangulated that online presence of a health product is a motivating factor for purchase among women of 45-60 years old.
A study from the US National Library of Medicine states that television advertising increases the sales of vitamin supplements. From Gen X and Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, we confirmed that women of the desired age group spend a significant amount of time watching television and Gen X find new products from advertisements. From these information, we were able to triangulate that television advertising is a motivational factor to buy a health product for women of the focused age group.
According to a Forbes article, social media plays a positive impact on the marketing of health products. A Gen X and social media reports suggest that Gen X and baby boomers spend time on social media for researching a brand before purchasing; however, the reports were not specific on the gender of the group. But since a dietary supplement report states that majority of supplement buyers are women, from which we assumed that among Gen X and baby boomers that use social media to make decisions on choosing brand, those who research on health supplements are women and triangulated that the impact of social media is one of the major motivating factors for women of age 45-65 to purchase a health product/supplement.