As consumers grow more aware of health and wellness benefits from multiple channels, nutraceuticals are rising to the fore as an everyday approach to personalised nutrition. With the wealth of information on nutraceuticals available, companies are making moves to enhance the interactivity and personalisation of their products with the use of mobile apps. FoodBev discussed such a product with Marcos López from Monteloeder.
López said that the future looks bright for nutraceuticals, with the sector becoming more consumer-focused over time.
“We have been in the nutraceutical business for more than 20 years. Yet the fact that this industry is taking so long to become more consumer-centric still surprising us. We have seen how digital technologies have revolutionised other industries around us, enabling consumer-focused approaches, resulting in improved and more adapted products and services to today’s consumer needs.”
Apps which pair up with nutraceutical products can offer ways for consumers to monitor daily nutritional habits, reinforcing the notion of nutraceuticals being everyday products.
Companies can utilise these aspects in their research and development stages to engage further with their target markets and personalise experiences for consumers.
“We foresee this combination of effective nutraceutical products with apps and digital platforms as a way to engage with consumers, to give them the support of experts working at the nutraceutical brands, always at the tap of a finger. We provide our partners with the tools to deliver complete solutions, and the opportunity to deliver better and personalised support to empower and facilitate consumers’ self-care.
“The best performance comes from a service related to nutraceutical products, that combined, can guide consumers to achieve better outcomes from using those products. This represents a great opportunity for brands to interact with their consumers, get to know them, and use this data to improve and grow day by day.”
As there is a multitude of factors affecting targets such as weight loss, product use alone won’t lead consumers to achieve their goals. Hence, the use of apps alongside ingredient and product use can fulfil this motivation that companies need to create for users.
López continued: “Personal characteristics, nutrition, exercise, habits, context, our choices affect our results when going through a weight loss or maintenance programme. Apps can be designed to complement the use of the product, demonstrating the product effectivity and helping consumers track their improvements. The app can also act to give consumers advice and support to achieve better results, taking into account their individual characteristics and contextual factors.”
This current drive for nutraceuticals can be attributed to heightened education levels for consumers, López says.
“People are more and better informed than ever before in regards to health. This has to lead to more preventive health approaches where nutraceuticals can be the best allied. Combining products to enhance health with digital tools to provide users with personalised advice and support is a great opportunity for nutraceutical brands to be seen from consumers as healthcare companions instead of companies trying to push sales.”
The apps that Monteloeder offer, for example, are linked to each ingredient and complement the nutraceutical products. These digital tools are formed to help consumers get the best out of nutraceuticals.
“We had to adapt the way we develop our solutions to create the methodology that we use nowadays. We take into account that our branded ingredients will be paired with a digital app from the early developmental stages. That has conditioned the way we design our formulas and made us consider how to process the screening and selection of active principles.”
Companies can get the best out of this technology by acknowledging the user’s daily habits from the early stages of production, as users now expect an experience completely tailored to them when it comes to health and wellness.
“Our apps are made to run in the background, keeping consumer-user interaction and inputs at a minimum in order to make them user-friendly. Our event-based apps send notifications to provide valuable information to the user. Demonstrating and tracking the effects of the product is also an important part of the strategy to reinforce the relationship between consumers and the brand, and maintain a high level of motivation for the user.”
© FoodBev Media Ltd 2024
