Consumers’ use of dietary supplements has remained fairly consistent this year, with 68% of American adults saying that they take dietary supplements compared to 66% last year, according to a new online survey conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs for the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), Washington D.C. Interestingly, this year’s survey showed that more adults than last year consider themselves to be “regular” users of dietary supplement products, with 52% of Americans identifying themselves in that category, up from 46% in 2006.
 
The online survey of adults nationwide was inconsistent with a companion telephone survey from Ipsos also conducted for CRN, which found that only 31% of Americans consider themselves “regular” users. Confidence levels for dietary supplements also differ between the phone and Internet respondents, with 80% of online participants saying that they are confident in the safety, quality and effectiveness of dietary supplements, compared to 67% of telephone respondents. Both numbers are consistent with discrepancies observed in last year’s results that showed that 79% of those surveyed online and 69% surveyed by telephone were confident in dietary supplements.

“This is the third year that we’ve conducted the survey online and it’s interesting to start to see the consistent trends building,” said Judy Blatman, vice president, communications, CRN. “It’s intriguing that some of the results between Internet respondents and telephone respondents are so far apart. The psychographics of the online respondents may reflect that Internet users in general take a more active role in seeking out information about their healthcare, and consequently are more confident in the products they use. Because they tend to make more fully informed decisions about their health, it would make sense that the confidence numbers would be higher and would explain why they’re more conscientious about using supplements regularly.”

Despite the increased media coverage of various product safety issues over the past year, consumers’ trust in dietary supplement products does not appear to have been significantly impacted. Last year, in the online survey 85% of consumers said that they believed that vitamin and mineral supplements are safe, compared to 84% this year; similarly, last year 70% agreed that herbal supplements are safe, compared to 70% this year.

Steve Mister, president and CEO, CRN, urges the industry not to get complacent when it comes to consumer trust, however. “We can’t take safety for granted. We need to make sure that there are quality control practices in place from start to finish, at each phase of the production process, to ensure the highest quality supplement products for our consumers. The publication of new good manufacturing practices for dietary supplements and the industry-wide Standardized Information on Dietary Ingredients (SIDI) voluntary program will help ensure quality, and the adverse event reporting law will also allow us to discover potential problematic patterns.  So as an industry we’re taking the kinds of necessary steps to help protect consumers and help raise the confidence level.”

Ms. Blatman further pointed out that healthcare professionals play an important role to instill consumer trust, noting the online survey finding that demonstrated 68% of supplement users trust their doctor as a reliable source of information about supplements, with 40% also naming pharmacists.  

As part of the “Life…supplemented” consumer wellness campaign, CRN recently announced that Ipsos is conducting a significant research study with 900 doctors and 300 nurses to learn more about their personal supplement use and whether or not that impacts the way they counsel their patients about dietary supplements. Results are expected to be released in November.

The 2007 Consumer Confidence Surveys were fielded in August by Ipsos-Public Affairs and funded by CRN. The first, consisting of 1,007 completed telephone interviews, was conducted annually for the eighth consecutive year, providing important trending data. The second survey, also fielded in August, was an online survey of 2,153 people and was first fielded in 2005. The random samples consist of U.S. adults aged 18+ and the results were weighted to represent the U.S. adult population.