• by Les Luchter , Yesterday

Athleisure is the defining health/wellness brand category among Next Gen -- Alpha and Gen Z -- consumers, reports Cafeteria, a platform that garners real-time insights from young people in exchange for rewards. The data comes via 240 total hours of in-app, private text and voice notes from over 1,400 14- to 26-year-olds.

Asked to name specific brands synonymous with health and wellness, 36% of participants named athleisure brands, led by Lululemon, Alo and Nike. Those three were followed across all brand categories by CeRave and Whole Foods.

Yet, given a $300 budget for health & wellness, with brand names left out of the picture, Gen Zers said they would allocate only up to 15% toward activewear.

The significance for retailers, Cafeteria said, is that “Athleisure has the youth's mindshare, but is losing wallet share.”

The grocery/healthy foods category, where Whole Food reigns, turned out to be the dominant area where Next Gen would spend its hypothetical budget, followed by gym memberships, vitamins/supplements and skincare (e.g., CeRave).

“For Gen Z,” reported Cafeteria, “skin is health,” with young consumers “valuing healthy, clear skin for more than appearances.” Their skin is seen as a “reflection of sleep, stress, diet, hydration, and self-care,” the platform said, with “good habits registering as a glow” and “bad habits showing up as breakouts.”

Health and wellness brand marketers  seeking to reach Alpha and Gen Z consumers – especially females -- may want to avoid “anything that smells paid” -- such marketing tactics as coupon codes, affiliate links and sponsorships, which nearly a third of the girls and women categorized as “scams” in their Cafeteria comments (about twice the male rate).

While Gen Next distrusts claims “that feel too perfect, too fast, or too sure of themselves,” Cafeteria did find, however, that young consumers “reward restraint.”  Such restraint includes “ claims that stay in one lane, name the actual ingredient, and don’t over-promise.”

That builds trust, Cafeteria said, along with providing proof that the product works (“research, clinical evidence, third-party testing, real numbers they can check”) and good third-party reviews (“the trust currency”).

Alpha and Gen Z also prejudge entire categories (“gummies, weight-loss powders, and ‘fat-burning’ supplements are read as scams until proven otherwise”) and are “increasingly skeptical” of both paid creators and AI-sounding ads.

Asked to name a creator they trusted for health and fitness, 22% of the young people named nobody.  

One influencer, however, proved to be the only one “trusted across genders.”  That creator is “Doctor Mike,” a pseudonym for family physician Mikhail Varshavski, who dispenses medical information, and has in the past also been trusted by such brands as Aflac, Allegra and Bioderma.

AI? “Gen Z + Alpha are skeptical of AI generally,” Cafeteria reports, and that skepticism sharpens around health. Core concerns include hallucinations, sycophancy bias, and data privacy. Some view AI as the WebMD spiral, upgraded: “ask about your symptoms and it will convince you you’re dying.”

On the other hand, nearly 40% of Next Gen names “Google and friends + family” (“look it up, then ask a human”) as the most-trusted source health info.

That human may well be a doctor, since docs by far were the most trusted health source, cited by 87% of females and 83% of males.  “Gen Next still trusts the white coat over the algorithm,” said Cafeteria.

They must also trust their wearables, since 57% of the participants are either already wearing them or have one on their wishlist, with steps and hear rate being the most tracked stats.

Finally, both GLP-1s and peptides face a hard sell with Alphas and Gen Z.

Many are “philosophically opposed” to GLP-1s, Cafeteria said, harboring such concerns as “Are GLP-1s bring back extreme Y2K-era beauty standards?”

Peptides in particular are rejected by 85% of Gen Z females who “negatively associate  the injections with frat-boy steroid users and looksmaxxers.”