Chinese weight management and/or loss clinics record double digit annual growth

The best performers are time easy and effort easy. They are passive weight therapies – such as massages and injections, TCM remedies and diet pills.


A new report, Weight Management/Loss Market in China,reveals booming demand for body reshaping treatments and therapies in China.

A number of features and categories of the weight management/loss market in China are country specific. They include traditional Chinese health therapies, such as, herbal products, teas, and acupuncture. The regulatory environment is also different with products sold over the counter in China that require a medical prescription in other markets.

The weight loss market is concentrated in the largest, most affluent so called "Tier one" coastal cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Indeed these markets have delivered the highest growth rates to date. However, inland cities, which have lagged behind the coastal cities, now show huge market potential.

The most popular weight loss solutions are passive. People want effort easy and time easy treatments. Body shaping Programs (such as massages and injections), Traditional Chinese Medicine-TCM remedies, and diet pills and programs are preferred by Chinese consumers. The exercise option, which requires the expenditure of energy and effort takes second place.

Besides the pure “weight loss” specialists, a very wide range of businesses provide slimming and weight related treatments. These include health and fitness, sport/gyms and beauty salon/spa category facilities, plus hospitals which do surgical weight loss interventions.

Businesses providing weight loss treatments reported a growth rate of more than 10% in 2007 compared to 2006. However, larger-sized companies are out-performing the sector because they offer a wider menu of services than the smaller sized businesses, invest in equipment, and employ professionally trained staff.

Strong growth is forecast to continue due to a number of factors, including:
• Increasing number of overweight/obese people in China and greater pressure on these overweight/obese people to lose unwanted weight
•Larger numbers of young overweight people
• Official policy which encourages fitness and raises consciousness about dangers of being overweight.
• The spinoffs from the 2008 Olympics in Beijing