For more than two years, the global pandemic has changed many consumers’ behavior, including raising awareness about health and wellness.
For more than two years, the global pandemic has changed many consumers’ behavior, including raising awareness about health and wellness. Kantar Worldpanel Division has started to provide insights to help understand a better landscape in consumer health from our consumer purchase tracking for OTC (Over The Counter), including remedies for cough & flu, digestive issues, pain killers, vitamins, and supplements. This sector has penetrated 70% of Indonesian households suggesting a huge opportunity to leverage. From Kantar study, the consumers purchase of the OTC categories with higher purchase levels can be seen meaning that the categories are in demand. Consumers demand for OTC categories varies depending on their needs.
CURATIVE SEGMENT immediate needs such as cough & flu remedies and pain killers have a high buyer base and shopping trips since it has an urgency to relieve sickness, including curing COVID-19 symptoms. At least, 1 out of 3 households has purchased OTC products in this segment in the past 12 months. On the other hand, remedies for digestive issues seem to be more of occasional needs with a lower buyer base and frequency. The trend for this looks more prominent during the fasting period suggesting higher relevancy during the season for this segment.
PREVENTIVE SEGMENT vitamins and supplements become the most popular categories to support a healthy lifestyle. With 1 out of 5 Indonesian consumers having purchased the category, it has the highest spending among all consumer health sectors, implying an opportunity for upper-class consumers and an affordable premium for middle-class consumers. In short, consumers are willing to spend for this category in supporting their healthy lifestyle. In addition, the common cold remedies category is having a relatively high penetration with more than one-third of the population, suggesting the buyer base is robust enough to leverage and discover growth. As such, its important to understand the shopper profile to optimize recruitment.
Looking further at the curative segment, the impact of the COVID case surge is seen with more shoppers purchasing curative categories such as pain killers, cough & flu, as well as common cold remedies. In addition, the seasonality trend is also shown in the digestive segment, which refers to the fasting period when buyer recruitment can be optimized. As such, it is important to have strong availability during the festive season to ensure shopper recruitment
In contrast, the preventive segment may not rely on seasonality with better relevancy to push shopper recruitment all year long. It raises the importance for brands and manufacturers to continuously educate and develop awareness among consumers on the relevancy of vitamins in maintaining health and supporting a healthy lifestyle.
