Wellness, that is the total wellbeing of an organism, is a fundamental human right. We all equally deserve it, but at the same time, we don’t feel it by the same measure. We all more or less try to achieve it and we all more or less succeed in it.
What does wellness mean for the citizens of Serbia, how do they achieve it, what stops them from feeling better and where do we stand now compared to the rest of the world – these are just some of the questions that we in McCann Truth Central tried to answer. Because it is our mission to discover the undiscovered truth about the world around us and break the common stereotypes. We thought of wellness as a theme with many things to learn and discover and as a concept with many delusions. And we were not wrong! In our social environment, the term “wellness” is often misinterpreted and not much is known about the concept of wellness, it is often approached rather superficially and we wanted to get the whole picture. A picture of wellness, that means, with all its physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social and financial aspects. Each of these aspects has its subcomponents and the concept of wellness is quite complex, so that was taken into consideration during the conduction of the study.
The study in Serbia was developed according to the model of the Truth Central Global study about wellness from 2012 that was conducted on the markets of the USA, Great Britain, Japan, Brazil, Peru, India, Mexico, Thailand, South African Republic and Chile. The experience of our colleagues who conducted the global study has helped us in creating the best draft for Serbia and the use and localization of the research instruments of the global study, enabled us to compare the local and global results. The research comprised of the quantitative and the qualitative phase. The quantitative phase was conducted with the help from the research agency on a national representative sample of 500 examinees. Examinees that participated in the research were older than 18 and the sample represented Serbia by sex, age, region and type of settlement.
The qualitative part of the research consisted of two parts – seven thorough interviews with the examinees of different socio-economic status, sex and age that live in Belgrade and six thorough interviews with experts from different areas. This part of the research was particularly interesting. Part of the conversation with “regular” examinees included a small task that they had to do before the interview: to photograph their “wellness hero” and their biggest “wellness enemy” and to conduct a diary of wellness activities that they did during the day and that contributed to their wellbeing. Apart from the useful information that thus obtained, we’ve realized that the task was useful for the examinees as well– they’ve become aware of certain things about themselves and about their wellness, and the research showed that raising awareness is the first step in improving one’s personal feeling of well-being.
We have conducted the interviews with the experts in the end, when he have gathered and processed the data from the prior two phases and we came to certain conclusions. Experts from the area of psychiatry, healthy nutrition, yoga, finance, telecommunication and marketing gave their observations of the topic itself as well as the results that we got, everyone in their own area of expertise. All of these phases represented a valuable and thorough source of information and if we add the global results that we compared our local data with, we can say that we have accomplished our primary goal and got a much clearer picture of the wellness in Serbia. A picture far more wholesome and comprehensive, even controverse at some parts, surprising and even disastrous at other. In any case, quite interesting!
And the concrete results? As a little teaser, here are just some of the truths that we discovered: It seems like we are not so unhappy; We are a nation that does not exercise; Serbia is not afraid of the growing obesity; Families are the most important support for leading a healthy life; In Serbia, we have more faith in our instincts than in technology; Brands can and should contribute to wellness of their consumers.
And if you want to know more, if you are interested, send an email to: zeljka.micic@mccann.co.rs
The interview was published on http://marketingmreza.rs/istina-o-wellnessu-u-srbiji/
