Insights from Tamara Rajah MBE
With senior leadership experience spanning retail, wellness and consumer strategy across brands such as Nationwide, Holland & Barrett and parkrun, alongside launching, scaling and successfully exiting a consumer wellness app, Tamara Rajah MBE has built her career at the intersection of brand, behaviour and growth.
Awarded an MBE for her contribution to technology and entrepreneurship, Tamara brings a rare ability to translate complex consumer insight into clear, commercial strategy. At the Leadership Summit, she challenged clinic owners to look beyond trends and tactics and instead focus on something far more fundamental: how and why modern consumers make decisions, and what that means for businesses that want to remain relevant, trusted and resilient.
Here are some of the top level takeaways from Tamara’s session.
They are short on clarity.
Today’s consumer is overwhelmed. Options are endless, attention is fragmented, and decision fatigue is real. In aesthetics and wellness, this shows up as patients researching more, questioning more, and comparing experiences not just with other clinics, but with the very best brands they interact with every day.
The implication for clinics is simple, but uncomfortable:
being “good” is no longer enough.
Consumers are no longer looking for the most options. They are looking for confidence, simplicity and reassurance that they are making the right choice.
Tamara highlighted a fundamental shift in how value is perceived. Consumers are no longer driven primarily by cost. Instead, value is defined by outcomes, experience and trust.
Patients are asking:
Clinics that compete on price alone risk commoditising their services. Clinics that articulate value clearly, consistently and confidently build loyalty and long-term resilience.
A key insight shared during Tamara’s session was that wellness consumers are not one homogenous group. Broadly, they fall into distinct segments, each with very different motivations, expectations and levels of engagement.
Some are highly informed and research-driven. Others value routine and simplicity. Some are motivated but overwhelmed and need guidance. Others engage only at a surface level and are highly price sensitive.
The strategic mistake many clinics make is trying to appeal to all of them at once.
The most successful brands do the opposite. They make a conscious decision about who they are for, and design their entire experience around that customer. From messaging and service design to pricing, pathways and communication.
This doesn’t limit growth.
It sharpens it.
When clinics pick their customer, decision-making becomes easier, experiences become more memorable, and trust is built faster.
Another important shift Tamara explored was the concept of lightweight loyalty. Modern consumers are not disloyal, but they are less committed by default. Loyalty is no longer assumed or inherited. It is earned through every interaction.
This means clinics need to think beyond one-off treatments and focus on:
Small points of friction add up quickly. Equally, small improvements compound over time.
It is an expectation.
Consumers now expect businesses to remember them, anticipate their needs and make relevant recommendations. In clinics, this means moving away from generic messaging and towards personalised pathways that feel considered and intentional.
Tamara was clear that personalisation does not need to be complex or expensive. Often, it starts with asking better questions, listening more closely, and using the data clinics already have more intelligently.
Her message was simple and direct:
pick your customer, simplify and personalise for them.
One of the most compelling parts of Tamara’s session was her focus on wellness as a category. Unlike many sectors, wellness is preventative, long-term and emotionally driven. It is resilient in uncertain markets and increasingly linked to longevity, quality of life and future health.
Clinics that understand this shift, and position themselves accordingly, are better placed to build sustainable, diversified businesses that extend beyond transactional treatments.
Tamara’s message was not about chasing trends. It was about anchoring growth in genuine customer understanding.
The clinics that will thrive long term are those that:
Customer centricity, Tamara reminded the room, is not a marketing tactic.
It is one of the strongest growth strategies available to any business.
