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- MediaGuardian,
- Wednesday May 23, 2001
The growth of lifestyle websites is fuelling an explosion in the market for vitamins and other supplements, according to new research.
The market research consultancy, Datamonitor, has published figures showing UK consumers now spend almost £165m on vitamins and other health products.
The company attributes the boom partly to websites such as Handbag.com and BeMe.com, which it claims are fuelling consumers' preoccupation with health.
"People have always been prepared to pay to look good but consumers are now increasingly willing to spend money on feeling good physically and mentally," said Rhod Jones, consumer markets analyst at Datamonitor.
"For consumers, much of the appeal of products promoting wellbeing - whether they are food, nutritional supplements or cosmetics - is for products to be 'natural', demonstrating a move away from mainstream synthetic pharmaceuticals and prescription-based medicine."
Health is now the fastest-growing area of the internet - an estimated 15,000-20,000 health sites are operating at the moment.
