Innovation in the pet food industry – E-commerce for dogs
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The Pet Food Industry Is Growing At a Fast Pace
This is article #2 of our new series of articles: the Growing Industries series. This series includes articles focused on industries that have experienced continuous growth in previous years to give you valuable insights and inspiration.
Check out article #1: The Gaming Industry – No Longer A Child’s Play
In 2017, the pet food industry grew 3x as fast as the packaged food industry, according to Euromonitor, a research firm.
This article shows how the pet food industry is growing and what drives this growth.
Global Pet Food Industry Statistics
The Global pet food market is projected to grow $107.42 Billion by 2024 at a CAGR of 4.8% from $79.49 Billion in 2017 (source).
Here are the projections for 2019:
North America: $33 Billion
Europe: $23 Billion
Asia: $7.6 Billion
South America: $6.23 Billion
Australia: $2.4 Billion
Top 3 pet food sales markets according to Statista:
- USA – $29 Billion; the market is expected to grow annually by 3.8%;
- UK – $4.82 Billion; the market is expected to grow annually by 3.9%;
- Brazil – $4.38 Billion; the market is expected to grow annually by 5.5%.
Judging by the huge growth rate, Brazil is winning the competition and will undoubtedly push the UK to third place as soon as 2020 or even sooner.
What is influencing growth?
1. Humanization
Pet owners are humanising their pets, thinking of them as full-fledged members of the family.
Millennials are leading the humanising trend by treating their pets like their first-born child.
In today’s economy, it is harder for Millennials to buy homes as their parents did. They value experiences over material possessions and spend their money on travels. Millennials choose to marry and become parents later in life. Raising a pet is the ultimate rehearsal before raising a child. And as their four-legged child, Millennials pamper their dogs/cats by buying them toys, clothes, high-quality collars, bowls, state-of-the-art communication devices etc.
2. Pet health
Health awareness has been a rising trend for people of all ages. We see more and more middle-aged women and men getting off their couches and starting to run, going to the gym or doing yoga. They prepare themselves to take part in running competitions like trail running, marathons or half marathons etc. Big organisations are supporting their employees striving to improve their health and stay active.
So there’s no surprise that health-conscious individuals become health-conscious pet owners. If you don’t eat junk food, it’s more likely you will not feed your beloved dog or cat junk food either.
3. The increasing trend of nuclear family
In its Pet Food Market Size & Growth research report, Grand View Research found that the growing trend of pet adoption is a result of the increasing number of nuclear families in emerging economies.
New parents are giving their children a companion and a friend. Many reports show growing with a pet is beneficial for children in terms of learning empathy and responsibility, social skills and communication. Having a dog or a cat is even more important in families with a single child.
As life expectancy and life quality have risen in the last decade, a new category of owners has come to the front: people over 65 years old.
4. Premiumisation
As pet parents, we want the best for our furry friends. We want them to live longer and healthier lives so we turn to brands that can offer more natural, high-quality ingredients, low-grain, GMO-free, gluten-free, no artificial ingredients pet foods.
We also care for our pets’ health illnesses, so we put them on diets which resemble a lot with human diets: diabetes, arthritis, obesity, skin issues etc.
Ageing pets are also the recipients of customised pet foods that can alleviate their failing eyesight, weakening joints etc.
Trends / Opportunities for growth
- Human-grade snacks and food
- Convenience
- Technology-driven innovation
The Farmer’s Dog is a good example because it embodies all three trends:
- It offers meals that are customized for each dog based on its profile, which includes age, breed, size, activity level, and food sensitivities;
- Its meals are put together by veterinary nutritionists using human-grade ingredients;
- The meals are cooked in human-grade kitchens and frozen before being sent to customers;
- It is a subscription service that sends freshly made meals directly to the dog owner’s doors.
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