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Naturals are big and here to stay. And in a large variety such as beverages, skincare, haircare, food products, lifestyle, leisure, fashion, ravel destinations and even jewellery. There is growing evidence that consumers consider a natural appeal highly inviting and motivating.
Yet the size of naturals business in many categories remains small. That is curious, indeed.

And it leads to a few fundamental questions. If consumers are actively green attitudinally, behaviorally why they are passively green? or worse neutral? Why have businessmen not been able to fully leverage green inclinations? Are consumers indeed ahead of marketers in the naturals arena? It seems so.

Naturals are growing in appeal across markets. There is prolific consumer evidence that people attitudinally prefer naturals. Several advantages of naturals are felt and perceived. From a products use point of view, naturals promise no side effects, holistic impact, non intrusive action and long term benefits. This functional credibility that consumers associate with naturals across product categories is well established. what is more significant is that young consumers are more pro naturals. This is borne out strongly in recent research.

Young people who will be mainstream customers of tomorrow show strong green leanings. Lifestyle and attitude research based on target group indexing with a sample size of 17000 confirms this. In metros 15 - 19 years olds say they are prepared to pay more for environment friendly products. Also given a choice they will prefer to use a herbal product than a non herbal product. So if the appeal of naturals is so evident and their potential so ripe, why then are naturals businesses not the sweeping success they were meant to be?

Marketing theory tells us that beyond functionality as much as 50% of overall appeal of a category or brand is driven by its emotional appeal or tugs. So one has to examine if there is deep and powerful emotionale driving the buzz around naturals. Few business ideas in today's choice cluttered world have the credibility, appeal and broad acceptance that natural products enjoy. So could there be a latent emotionale that natural businesses haven't tapped into?

Being a growing segment, naturals are perhaps among the most researched fields - qualitatively, quantitatively and in R&D terms.

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* Contributed by: -
Ashish Ohlyan,
MIB (2005-07),
Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad.