Imagine: a dietary supplement that has been carefully crafted without any impact on its effectiveness. It would be delicious, beautiful, subtly fragrant, pleasant to the touch, and recognizable to the ear. Welcome to nutrasensorialization, a path of innovation in nutraceuticals that gives pride of place to emotional marketing.
Nutrasensorialization deciphered
The neologism “nutrasensorialization” designates a lever of innovation for players in the food supplement industry, axed on sensory characteristics of a product in order to guarantee a pleasant and innovative user experience.
This global approach is inspired by the foodification, referring to the fact that food supplements increasingly resemble foods, an approach motivated by the desire to take the food supplement out of its medical dimension, in its cold and dull side, to bring it into a moment of consumption that becomes a pleasant experience. The underlying objective is to facilitate compliance, but is also induced by a need for brand differentiation in a booming food supplement market, where the number of users and actors continues to grow.
The figures bear witness to this: in 2023, the market turnover amounted to 2.7 billion euros, which represents a growth of 3% compared to 2022. 1
At the heart of the world of nutraceuticals, consumer experience is a key concept and, by drawing on the five senses, five levers of innovation are clearly emerging. This innovation affecting the sensoriality of the product echoes the marketing techniques which affect the emotions of potential buyers: feeling, seeing, hearing, smelling “simply” provides emotions.
Go in all the senses, that's what nutrasensorialization is!
Taste
In the context of the consumption of food supplements, make Making a pleasant moment of consumption a daily habit is the key to compliance.
For this, taste is the sense to be excited, since it is most instinctively exploited when it comes to food. TheIt is envisaged so in two ways:
- From the perspective of transparency and naturalness: it is a taste that reflects the composition of the product and favors "the taste of efficiency", responding to the imagination which wants a rather "bad" taste to be associated with a health benefit.
- From the angle of pleasantness: the “natural” taste is maskedé to offer a pleasurable consumption. This is the case, for example, of food supplements based on marine ingredients, widely used for their virtues, but also very well-known for their pronounced taste, the masking processes of which are particularly sought after in nutraceuticals.
The smell
Aromatic molecules circulate through the retro-olfaction pathways, taste and smell are inseparable in the context of food intake. So, just before the taste experience, there is the olfactory experience: this multiplies the appeal for the consumer, from opening the box or packaging to opening the final container.
The use of essential oils or aromas in formulations as well as in the containers of active ingredients thus contributes to the sensory experience.
View
Nutrasensorialization is also about putting on a show. The dietary supplement market is undergoing a complete aesthetic transformation, due to the influence of social media, a reflection of our society where appearance plays a major role. Nutraceutical players are no exception and are bettingnt on beauty to strengthen their attractiveness.
Thus, beyond its role of protecting the active ingredients, the galenic plays that of differentiation: transparent capsules allowing a glimpse of the active ingredients, liquid ampoules, effervescent solutions, gummies colorful and playful in the pure tradition of foodification...
Touch
Whether the product itself or the packaging, the sense of touch is stimulated when handling it.In terms of packaging, the choice implicitly says a lot about practicality, durability or even quality, depending on whether it is recyclable, heavy, small, textured, etc.
Hearing
Linking nutraceuticals and sound, really? Yes, it's possible: some brands are focusing on hearing development as part of a complete sensory experience. This ranges from " poc » when opening a pillbox at a QRcode on the container referring to an immersive sound experience, or even pass by developing a specific sound atmosphere at the point of sale.
The nutraceutical market brings together products with multiple promises, the most sought-after of which are vitality and immunity, digestion, and stress and sleep. Through the five senses,Nutrasensorialization allows the identity of a product and/or a brand to be affirmed and in this sense constitutes a path of innovation for the food supplement industry.
