Report Overview
Pet owners are spending on “necessity” categories such as pet food, but there are still opportunities in this challenging market.
Like other non-food supplies categories, pet durables has faced significant challenges to growth in the past year. In the previous edition of this report, Packaged Facts discussed how pandemic-driven purchasing had led to impressive growth in the durable pet products market, resulting in a 17% increase in sales in 2020 and a similarly high 16% in 2021. This growth was a distinct change in this market from 2019, when sales increased by only 3%. Then, in 2022 and even more so in 2023, despite price hikes due to inflation, durables categories once more subsided to pre-pandemic growth trends, with many marketers reporting negative growth toward the end of the period.
Read more on the affordable pet products market.
Challenges to growth include inflation unprecedented in recent decades, a declining dog population, and generational changes in pet ownership levels. Further complicating the picture was the boom in growth during the pandemic years, which led to many pet owners purchasing a host of durable products that don’t tend to require replacement on a frequent basis. Overall, the durables market ended 2023 at approximately $8.4 billion in sales, up 1.6% from $8.3 billion in 2022 and $5.4 billion in 2018, for a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.3% for 2018-2023, due almost exclusively to growth earlier in the period.
See an article in PETS International.
Although the pandemic was a boon for durable pet product marketers in 2020 and 2021, more recently this success has turned into a challenge as pet owners feel less of a need to replace durable items that they so recently purchased. Packaged Facts March 2024 Survey of Pet Owners found that among pet owners, 42% agreed that they hadn’t replaced any of my durable (non-food) pet products with newer items in the past two years as a result of having purchased these products in 2020 or 2021. Especially with the economic challenges many pet owners are facing, they are less likely to spend money on durable items that are older but still in usable condition and more likely to put off replacing these items. As such, spending on durable pet products is expected to be slightly lower than the pre-pandemic normal in the coming years, with annual sales gains through 2028 combining into a compound annual growth rate of less than 2%. That said, one development that could drive growth higher would be a return to growth in dog ownership more quickly than anticipated.
Focusing on product innovation and consumer preferences, Durable Dog and Cat Pet Care Products in the US, 5th Edition, breaks out this market into seven categories:
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Toys
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Collars, leashes, and harnesses
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Carriers, crates, and housing
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Beds
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Bowls, feeders, waterers
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Apparel/fashion accessories
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Litter boxes and accessories
This fully updated fifth edition quantifies the market as a whole as well as category by category, calculating annual sales and historical compound annual growth rates for 2018 through 2023, and projected growth rates through 2028. Key trends explored include the impact of inflation on pet spending, the effects of the decline in the dog population, the focus on home and its strengthening of pet owners’ relationship with their pets, the overarching focus on health and wellness, and retail trends including the ongoing shift to e-commerce and omnimarket participation. Through custom surveying in Packaged Facts’ Surveys of Pet Owners, the study highlights consumer purchasing patterns and preferences in each category. Including over one hundred product illustrations, the report discusses trends in marketing and new product development, while also identifying key players in the market overall and at the category level. Additional data sources include data from MRI-Simmons National Consumer Studies.
Report Methodology
The information contained in this report was obtained from primary and secondary research. Our primary research consumer analysis draws mainly on two sources:
Packaged Facts’ Surveys of Pet Owners, primarily the ones conducted in January 2024 and March 2024. These surveys have a sample of 1,500-1,600 US respondents aged 18 or over who, in aggregate, are representative of the primary demographic measures of the US Census Bureau including gender, age bracket, race/ethnicity, geographic region, household income bracket, and presence of children in the household. The survey samples included 1,268 dog owners and 822 cat owners for the January 2024 survey and 479 dog owners and 293 cat owners for the March 2024 survey.
MRI-Simmons booklet-based consumer surveys of a large and random sample of approximately 50,000 consumers through Fall 2023, who in aggregate represent a statistically accurate cross-section of the US population. Note that MRI-Simmons releases correspond to an approximately 12-month roll-up of survey fielding ending in the quarter indicated; the respondents and results for adjacent surveys are therefore partially overlapping, rather than mutually exclusive.
Our primary research also includes interviews with pet market experts and participation in pet industry events like the American Pet Products Association’s Global Pet Expo and Petfood Industry/Watt Publishing’s Petfood Forums. The analysis also reflects on-site examination of retail and service provider venues and online canvassing.
Secondary research includes information- and data-gathering from consumer business and trade publications, including Pet Age, Pet Business, Pet Product News International, and Petfood Industry; company profiles in trade and consumer publications; annual reports of companies in the pet market; and information culled from Packaged Facts’ extensive pet market research database and report collection. Our estimates of market size and company performance are based on reported revenues of pet product manufacturers, retailers, and pet services providers; background sales data from syndicated sales-tracking sources; surveys of independent and chain pet store retailers; government data including US Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Surveys; and figures from other market research sources.
Our estimates of market size and company performance draw on reported revenues of pet product manufacturers and retailers; government data including US Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Surveys; and figures from other market research and retail sales tracking sources.