Selling vitamins and supplements online is a booming industry, which can learn from the mistakes that have been made by the food sector, according to a group of pharmacists at one of the leading online retailers, Thrive Vitamins.
Director of the company, Brian Duggan, stressed the importance of consumers knowing where the ingredients in their vitamins and supplements are coming from. He discussed the issue of trust, referring to the recent horse meat scandal in the food sector as an example of how that trust can be broken.
According to Duggan, people have a sense of wellbeing when they feel that they know where their food is coming from, and that has been shattered recently by the shocking revelations about mislabelled products and inaccurate information in the food chain systems.
Many people use online vitamins and supplements to boost their wellness, but there is a problem with this, in that the mere fact that they are sold online opens them up to scepticism. People often associate online sales with disreputable products, and don’t feel that they can trust that their products come from a trusted source or, indeed, are actually what they claim to be.
Decent online retailers of these types of products must now try to learn from the broken trust caused by the horse meat scandal and ensure that they build a relationship of trust with their customers. This can be achieved by ensuring that they communicate to customers the fact that buying from their online store is just as safe as buying from a high street shop. All products must be accurately labelled, reflecting the contents of the box or bottle and stating the origins of the products inside.
This is particularly important in an industry that often has to rely on people’s trust that their daily vitamin compound is keeping them healthy, as the results of taking a vitamin or supplement are often not immediately tangible.
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