Rapid Expansion in the Health Food Market

Shift Towards a More Health Conscious Lifestyle

In the United States, the specialty food market is worth over $8 Billion. In fact, over half of the American population consumes specialty foods. The consumer market for these products ranges greatly with 60% of the consumers being between 18-44 years old. However, there is a visible change in consumers and the millennials are becoming the largest customer segment.

Recent studies show that 31% of Americans snack more than they used to. This is a direct reflection of American’s love of convenience, living a busier lifestyle, packaging innovations, and expended distribution. This new customer segment of millennials are also shifting their concerns more and more towards being health conscious. What better way to address this health concern and increase in snaking than through specialty snack foods?

In the United States, there are high regulations and tax on junk-food. This hurts the competition and opens a window for convenient health foods. One problem that these specialty foods face is that they are expensive and, as a result, are mostly bought by upper-middle class families. However, the benefits outshine this price concern and people are showing a willingness to pay a higher price for a higher quality good.

Healthy Living Made Easy 

Obesity and diabetes are epidemics in the United States. In the US, 166 million people are obese, 1.25 million people have type 1 diabetes and 19.85 million people have type 2 diabetes.

To help combat this massive problem, companies have started to develop apps as easy, convenient ways to track your overall health. Most of the mobile-health application users look for goal tracking and for warning of potential health issues.

In recent studies, it was recorded that 60%, roughly 135 million, American adults say that they try to track their diet or exercise. Of this 135 million people, 40 million use an app to do so. Total, 150 million American adults said that they could use a smartphone app to manage their health-related issues. One of these health issues is diabetes. However, only 4% of diabetics use diabetes management apps because they are unsatisfied with the current offering.

There is a lot of competition in the app industry. Forty percent of the top 100 apps on the global charts are less than one-year-old. Brand loyalty to apps is low because comparing similar apps is easy; so, being able to differentiate yourself is important because there are so many diet apps and they are virtually the same. Therefore, having strong brand awareness is crucial in the app market because people search for specific names, not general terms.

The market for health apps is booming. Millennials are focused on fitness while baby-boomers are focused on health. These are two giant segments that have barely been tapped. Consumers are constantly searching for that one app that can do more than the last and provide more accurate features. This is a window for app companies that can offer advanced technological offerings because there are not a lot of apps that are very accurate.

One of our clients, DietSensor, was recently awarded for their innovative technology in this industry. Be sure to check out their website!