As the trend of general health becomes a foothold for the maternity and child industry to seek growth, providing personalized and comprehensive nutritional support at different stages for different groups and safeguarding everyone’s health has become particularly important today.
After three years of continuous tracking and analysis of family nutrition, Elfinn, an expert in the big health nutrition industry, has drawn a “Family Nutrition Puzzle” to reflect the attention to health nutrition and consumption habits at different ages, and then present a new trend for lifecycle health.
At the CBME “Family Nutrition Development Conference,” Elfinn delved into this “Family Nutrition Puzzle.”
The following is shared by Elfinn, organized through CBME insights:
Part One
Subgroup Characteristics
(1) Alpha Era (2012–now)
Infants and young children are referred to as the people of the Alpha era. The people of the Alpha era have three precise needs: precise nutrition, diverse psychology, and smart growth.
Precise nutrition must be accurate, not just divided by stages, but possibly including growth development, physique differentiation, and effect differentiation—where effect differentiation is a dynamic process based on the results of the previous phase to choose the next step.
Diverse psychology refers to the fact that the parents of this group of children, including grandparents, span a great generational gap, which also leads to different psychological states within the family.
Smart growth means that in this digital age, some management of the human body will become more scientific, and nutrition will also become more data-driven.
Regarding the health needs of infants and young children, there are two scenarios: at home and outdoors. The former refers to scientific “three meals and two snacks”; the latter involves traveling, kindergarten, children’s parties, and so on.
Overall, the core keywords for the health needs of infants and young children point to absolute safety, feeding science, customized nutrition, and enjoyable nutrition. Feeding science refers to a group that strictly follows knowledge frameworks, self-test tables, and white papers to learn and feed without much comparison and thought; enjoyable nutrition cannot be separated from intelligence building. Now very young children, possibly as young as four or five years old, already know many nutritional concepts, know what they are eating, and know why they are eating.
As for the nourishment and health scenarios for Gen Z moms raising Alpha generation kids, it’s divided into two parts: nutritional energy, which means eating well and supplementing nutrition, so the underlying requirements are safety, quality, and nutrition; the other part is fun sharing, which involves a child’s enlightenment and happy growth, with the underlying logic being convenience, good taste, and fun.
(2) Generation Z (1997–2012)
As the bridge between generations in the family, the mindset and needs of Generation Z require our special attention.
This group leans towards personalized health consumption choices, demonstrating four trends: trendy health practices, lazy health, competitive nutrition, and self-pleasing consumption. They prefer to supplement their nutrition in ways they find enjoyable and comfortable, such as ready-to-eat, gummies, and orally disintegrating strips.
The psychology behind trendy health practices is that this generation of young people find it difficult to stick with nutritional management, and they turn “the difficulty in sustaining nutritional management” into a phase of the trend.
Generation Z’s health and nutrition scenarios are divided into six time slots, including breakfast, snack, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, and late-night scenes. It can be seen that Gen Z has a relatively high awareness of low sugar and zero fat, with 76.4% of Gen Z believing that low sugar and zero fat are very necessary.
However, this group also has another distinct feature: “emergency health,” meaning they collapse after a health check and then begin planning a rational diet.
(3) Generation Y (1981–1996)
The Generation Y group forms the main force of the family nutrition puzzle. They have clear fitness or health goals and are willing to pay for professional products and services.
The keywords for the Generation Y group are: balanced nutrition, sensory experience, and emotional health. Sensory experience refers to this group’s very noticeable need for the full-link experience from product to service in nutritional supplementation.
Generation Y’s nutrition and health scenarios are also divided into six detailed scenarios. Additionally, this group has a very distinct feature: they like drinking water and have a very clear understanding of this.
(4) Generation X (1965–1980)
The Generation X group also forms the main force in the family nutrition puzzle. Their key phrases are: health-adapted aging, food as medicine, and therapeutic tastes. Food as medicine is a very significant trait of this group, as they care about food ingredients and are willing to spend money on them.
Generation X’s nutrition and health scenarios are divided into six scenes: breakfast, adjustment, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, and before sleep. This group has a very high percentage who eat breakfast and are concerned with food nutrition and gut health.
(5) Silver-haired Population (1946–1964)
Lastly, regarding the silver-haired population, they have financial support for their own decision-making, so cognitive education for this group is essential. Their key points towards management of the “three highs” (hypertension, hyperlipidemia, hyperglycemia), health preservation, and emotional companionship.
The nutritional and health scenarios for the silver-haired group are divided into four major scenes: morning exercise, breakfast, lunch, after meal, dinner, and before sleep. They hope to preserve health through food and maintain regular exercise in the morning and evening.
Part Two
Core Purchasers
Young, adult, and middle-aged women aged 20-45 are undoubtedly the purchasers of health nutrition, accounting for 73% of the buying group.
When we roughly categorize the 49,416 families nationwide into four types, the importance of decision-making by women aged 20-45 is also evident because they have multiple roles: themselves, wives, parents of children, and children of parents.
Health consciousness and willingness to buy are very important foundations for purchasing behavior. They love themselves, their children, their parents, and their partners. Additionally, in our research portrait, for women aged 20-40, there is a trend in the importance ranking of family members: self > children > parents > partner. Of course, this is also subject to the limitations of our sample size in terms of city levels, so we hold an open discussion attitude.
In terms of nutritional health concepts and consumption needs for female decision-making shoppers, six areas of high concern are healthy dining tables, health care, health preservation, emotional healing, home health, and sleep health.
Finally, I would like to say a few words to all the practitioners in this industry—
Think from the consumer’s perspective and experience new opportunities in products and services.
Use the shopper’s perspective to plan new concepts in marketing and communication.
With the insight of product innovators, research the benefits of scientific health.
As industry pioneers, lead the way in technological craftsmanship and upgrades.
With the perception of caregivers, develop the future of healthy nutrition brands.
I hope everyone can have a beautiful life that is as constant as the moon, as rising as the sun, as long-lived as Nanshan, and as prosperous as pines and cypresses, and have the great wisdom of a practitioner in the health nutrition industry. Thank you.
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