Meditation Survey: Practitioners Likely to Stick With It

Meditation is becoming an increasingly popular method of unwinding and getting rid of stress. There are many different ways for people to go about meditating, but mobile apps and similar services like Headspace are becoming increasingly popular with connected consumers who want a simple way to clear their heads. In fact, meditation is one of several growing complementary health approaches in the U.S., according to the National Institutes of Health. So how many people have tried meditation? And how many are likely to utilize apps and services to help them meditate? We asked 1,000 respondents on August 17-18 about their thoughts on complementary and alternative health practices like meditation.

Health Practices

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, 16% of respondents said that they meditate regularly, making it the most popular alternative or complementary health practice among respondents. In addition, 25% have at least tried meditation at some point. 13% said they practice yoga regularly, while 27% have tried it. 9% utilize massage therapy and 21% have tried it. 7% get chiropractice adjustments regularly and 22% have tried it. And 63% said they don’t regularly take part in any alternative or complementary health and wellness activities.

Stress Concerns

In general, 72% of respondents said that they are at least somewhat concerned with health and wellness. 49% said they regularly take part in activities that are designed to improve their health. And 58% said they are at least somewhat interested in learning about new ways to improve their health.More specifically, one of the main benefits of meditation is its potential to help practitioners relieve some stress. And 58% of respondents said that they often experience stress. In addition, 63% said they are concerned about how stress impacts their health.

Meditation

Overall, 67% of respondents said that they understand what exactly meditation is. And 66% believe that meditation can help people decrease stress and improve their health overall. But looking forward, just 35% said that they are likely to try using meditation at some point in the coming year. Of those who have already tried meditation at some point, 77% said that they are likely to meditate in the next year. In addition, 64% of those who are likely to meditate this year said they would be at least somewhat likely to use apps or services designed to help them.

Key Takeaways

Even thought many consumers claim to understand what meditation is and what the benefits are, the majority still haven’t ever tried it. Those who have tried it are likely to still practice meditation regularly, which suggests that once people try it, they’re likely to be happy with the outcome and stick with it. For that reason, companies that make meditation apps or services could potentially increase their users by incentivizing word-of-mouth marketing so that people will share their experiences with friends and social media connections. In addition, there was a fair amount of overlap between those who practice meditation and those who practice other complementary health activities like yoga. So targeting some of those consumers could increase the odds of meditation apps and services gaining users. You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.Photo Credit: Meditation by Konstantin Stepanov under CC BY 2.0What do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on August 17-18 via AYTM’s online survey panel.