Winning in wellness: Creating trust and driving growth

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

PwC Strategy&, October 5, 2026

by Makram Debbas, Zack Pych, Alberto Vigada, Sukalp Tipre, Jürg Haller, and Inge Cajot




Wellness has become one of the few consumer themes cutting across almost every major sector. It now shapes demand in food and beverage, hospitality, consumer health, beauty, apparel, fitness, preventive care, and longevity. What was once a loose product attribute— “better for you,” “natural,” “healthy,” or “premium”—is increasingly becoming a broader consumer logic. People are using wellness products, services, and experiences to manage how they feel, how they perform, how they age, and how they present themselves to the world.

As consumers increasingly internalize wellness, the wellness industry vertical is evolving into a broad-based consumer operating system. This operating system is driven by a core demand logic that determines how consumers choose brands and allocate their spending across categories. It manifests itself in repeatable everyday behaviors: eating better, moving more, sleeping better, managing stress, and protecting long-term health. A diverse ecosystem of companies—spanning consumer health, nutrition, fitness, beauty, apparel, hospitality, preventive care, mental well-being, and longevity—orbit around the core.

Opportunities for growth and profitability abound for consumer companies that embrace this emerging reality. Between 2024 and 2029, the broad-based wellness market is forecast to grow by 7.6 percent annually, versus the 6.2 percent annual growth recorded over the previous five years. At this rate, the global market for wellness products and services will exceed US$9.75 trillion by the end of the decade. Download the full PDF here.

Time to increase Qatar’s financial literacy

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:  

Qatar Tribune, May, 16, 2024

by Raed Kombargi, Fadi Adra, Swati Chaudhary, and Rasha Salem

As lifestyle aspirations, easy access to digital credit and loans, and the need to finance education and real estate drive up consumer debt levels in Qatar, the case for bolstering financial literacy is becoming urgent. This growing weight of consumer debt, coupled with the ongoing paradigm shift in the social contract, underscores the importance of financial literacy as a tool for managing debt and ensuring financial stability. Research from the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center finds that countries with higher levels of financial literacy have lower levels of household debt, higher savings rates, and greater resilience during financial downturns than those with lower levels of financial literacy.

Qatari institutions increasingly recognize financial literacy as a critical factor for economic empowerment and financial stability, and have begun to act. Witness, among other efforts, the financial literacy programs launched by the Qatar Central Bank, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education’s decision to add financial literacy as an elective for eleventh and twelfth-grade students, and the Qatar Stock Exchange’s commitment to raising the financial literacy of investors.

While dedicated programs are a good start, meeting increasing financial literacy across the country in a timely manner requires an overarching strategy and a holistic framework that incorporates a multi-dimensional view of life-stages and beneficiary contexts. Read the rest here.

The Hidden Costs of Clicking the “Buy Now, Pay Later” Button

Insights by Stanford Business, Feb. 2, 2024

by Theodore Kinni


Cory Hall

In the past couple of years, a new payment option has become almost ubiquitous on online retailers’ checkout screens: Buy Now, Pay Later.

This fintech innovation offers consumers instant financing for large and small purchases on a transactional basis. In a typical purchase, a shopper might pay 25% down for that new sofa or this week’s groceries and pay off the remaining 75% in three equal installments — one every two weeks. If they make the payments on time via a bank account or credit card, the loan is interest-free.

Over the past decade, fintech companies such as Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay have taken Buy Now, Pay Later from a niche alternative to a mainstream choice by signing up tens of thousands of retailers. The retailers offer BNPL as a payment option at the point of sale and pay a small merchant fee, as with credit cards.

Unlike plastic, however, BNPL does not require a rigorous credit check. That’s made it a hit with consumers, especially younger adults without well-established credit. Total loan volume among the largest BNPL providers grew from $8.3 billion in 2020 to $24.2 billion in 2021, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. During the 2023 holiday season alone, shoppers availed themselves of $16.6 billion in BNPL loans. Estimates for near-term growth range widely, though it’s been estimated that global loan volume could reach $1 trillion by 2025.

“BNPL is a pretty slick innovation. It is convenient and it’s basically free credit if you pay it off on time,” says Ed deHaan, a professor of accounting at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

However, it also has the potential for misuse and abuse. Read the rest here.