Wellness’ $2.7 Trillion Market Now Runs on Five Consumer Types

By Amara Osei

McKinsey & Company, a global management consultancy firm, values global wellness at $2.7 trillion, and two consumer groups now generate 55% of spending.

Its Tuesday report draws on 10,000 consumers in the United States, China, Germany and the United Kingdom.

“One of the attitudes that struck us the most in the survey was that 38% of U.S. consumers said health and wellness is a core part of their identity [now],” Anna Pione, partner at McKinsey & Company and co-author of the report, told Glossy.

Pione also found wellness ranked No. 2 in every generation, behind friends and family. She said that pairing favored brands that let consumers project a wellness identity.

How is spending distributed?

Over the past year, McKinsey’s five segments replaced one former wellness-forward consumer with distinct spending and loyalty patterns.

• Maximalist optimizer: 25% of consumers and 40% of market spend. This top-spending group tries many wellness options, lacks a fixed routine and remains open to experimentation.
• Confident enthusiast: 10% of consumers and 15% of spend. The group is less experimental and remains loyal to routines that work.
• Health struggler: 30% of consumers and 25% of spend. The fastest-growing segment nearly doubled year over year.
• Health traditionalist: 15% of consumers and 10% of spend. The group prefers proven, simple wellness basics.
• Wellness shirker: 20% of consumers and 10% of spend. The group has deprioritized health and buys only budget-priced essentials.

McKinsey characterized both traditionalists and shirkers as skeptical, minimal and price-conscious.

Pione said the maximalist optimizer is the easiest audience for a brand with cutting-edge wellness offerings. The commercial test is whether those offerings can enter the confident enthusiast’s routines and habits.

She described health strugglers as the fastest-growing group. GLP-1s and generative AI search have changed how this audience feels empowered to manage its health, Pione said. It was previously disengaged, making the segmentation shift unusual.

Gen Z and millennials still account for the majority of wellness spending, McKinsey noted. Baby boomers aged 62-80 today are becoming more active, and many fall into the health struggler archetype.

Pione compared wellness identity signals with luxury fashion and said the categories now intersect rather than cannibalize each other; wellness offerings increasingly resemble luxury offerings. Wearables, athleisure, run clubs and boutique fitness studios act as visible signals. She said most people want to identify with something, and wellness is becoming that thing.

Pione expects wellness values and offerings to blend into traditional health and lifestyle categories rather than remain in clear-cut groups.

“Broadly, we see winning brands finding ways to build or highlight the way they intersect with health and wellness,” she said.

“Consumers [are] increasingly raising the bar in terms of what they expect from brands, from an efficacy perspective, from a clean perspective [and] from scientific backing of what’s being offered. [The] brands that can bring that to consumers, and explain the story in a way that brings that credibility, will be huge [in the future].”

Who moved, and where did brands show up?

• RockSalt Pilates named Stephanie Knepp its new COO. The studio chain operates in California, Arizona and the United Arab Emirates; her CV includes consultancy group Simply Dynamic and fitness service provider American Leisure.
• Solv Wellness named Dr. Christine Vaccaro its first chief medical officer. The 16-year-old company makes perimenopause and menopause products for pelvic, urinary, vaginal and menopause health.

Glossy reported that Ulta Beauty continues to lead beauty retail’s wellness boom. On Tuesday, the retailer said it will sell Whoop wearables online and in selected brick-and-mortar locations from March, competing with Best Buy, Target and Dick’s.

Kimberly-Clark completed its approximately $48 billion acquisition of Kenvue on November 2. The deal joins the parent of Kleenex, Kotex and Thinx with the parent of Tylenol and Listerine.

What happened around the NYC marathon?

Glossy reported a broad turn-out for Sunday’s NYC marathon. New Balance, Nike, Hoka and On Running hosted pre-marathon “shake out” runs. In a Brooklyn pop-up, Celsius offered race-day gear customization, Salt & Stone staged an exclusive merchandise pop-up, and Maybelline partnered with running-sunglasses brand Rendezvous Sports.

According to coaching app Runna’s survey data, one-third of consumers and 52% of Gen Z respondents aspire to run a marathon.

How is boutique fitness changing?

Mariana Tek found that 75% of new boutique fitness studios opened in the past year offer Pilates. It also found that 22% of all studios surveyed added at least one new class modality in the last 24 months.

What else changed the conversation?

The Wall Street Journal examined how Christina Applegate was misdiagnosed with MS. The New York Times covered the arrival of “pilates bros.” Modern Retail reported that more than half of online supplement shoppers worry about counterfeit products.

Vogue profiled “wheat meat,” described as the best plant-based protein, and Beauty News Daily examined the coming K-beauty influence on supplement routines.

On a special crossover episode with Modern Retail, Glossy Beauty Podcast host Lexy Lebsack discussed which products and categories should, and should not, be called wellness in 2026.

Glossy’s wider recap noted continued growth at The Estée Lauder Companies, with fragrance driving momentum; Ouai’s cinematic web series and its view that “People are craving a new version of authenticity” amid a shift toward long-form content; Oribe’s annual holiday collaborations for brand building and sales; Front Row’s new Seoul office and K-beauty strategy; Nordstrom’s unexpected “Holiday timing is a moving target” campaign; comedians as fall fashion faces; and the value of vintage remakes.

The next test for brands is concrete: move cutting-edge wellness offerings into the loyal enthusiast’s routine while meeting the efficacy, clean perspective and scientific backing Pione says consumers increasingly expect.