The brand positioning in the wellness sector demands more than a good insight about the customer behavior and lifestyle trends. In the spirituality and wellness domain, every consumer is a case study and is characterized by very unique needs and expectations. Unlike the other consumer group traits, there are no well defined customer clusters – which mean that every customer requires a completely tailored wish list.

Understanding the consumer clusters
Highly integrated with the field of psychology, consumer behavior profiling takes a new meaning in the spirituality and wellness domain. It will be practically naïve to expect discrete consumer segments and create a unique brand strategy for a segment of consumers. Based on the psychological, emotional and physiological aspirations of individuals, marketers can categorize their potential customer pools in the following…

• Emotional wellness
• Ethical / Spiritual wellness
• Work-Life balance
• Trauma recovery and wellness
• Life purpose

Capturing the consumer voices
The new breeds of consumers are active on the social web – Research and information sharing is a regular chore for the new web savvy consumers. In many cases, consumer sentiments enable the marketers to make concrete and business-worthy modifications to their products and services. In order to tap the knowledge and needs of customers, a ‘listening mechanism’ should be enabled in the online and offline world – which brings the ‘voice of customers’ to your drawing table.

The knowledge network
The last decade has witnessed the advent and gradual maturing of a slew of community-based, professional and niche social networks. The volume of ‘customer voices’ and ‘market intelligence’ available on these networks is staggering and waiting to be leveraged – and put into action. Apart from the regular joints like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, FourSquare and Flickr, every industry segment can dive into their specific industry networks – managed and administered by experts in their fields.