While Germans associate many positive aspects with herbal OTC health products, like safety and sustainability, brands need to tackle performance concerns with user ratings, clinical evidence and detailed ingredient concentrations.
While regular OTC health product usage outperforms herbal OTC health product usage, women are more likely to use herbal OTC health products than men, opening opportunities within women’s health.
Due to inflation, price increases for OTC medication escalated in 2023. Despite generally being launched at higher price points, herbal OTC health products remained resilient during the cost-of-living crisis. In the 12 months to February 2024, 17% of herbal health users increased their usage compared to the previous year.
31% of OTC health consumers agree that herbal OTC health products are less effective than regular ones, explaining the greater usage of regular OTC health products to some extent.
Users’ strong focus on OTC health products’ effectiveness asks herbal health brands to step up efforts around efficacy to increase usage. 29% of herbal health consumers who consider herbal OTC health products less effective than regular ones find user ratings important. Hence, user ratings provide a more cost effective opportunity for brands to convince doubtful Germans than other avenues, such as clinical trials. Herbal brands can also reinforce their value by calling out highly concentrated ingredients or leveraging positive perceptions, such as sustainability, investing further into sustainable concepts, such as refills.
While Germans associate many positive aspects with herbal OTC health products, like safety and sustainability, brands need to tackle performance concerns with user ratings, clinical evidence and detailed ingredient concentrations.
Hannah Sandow, Health & Wellbeing Senior Analyst, Germany
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