Gen Z and Millennials as Pet Care Consumers

Report Overview

What is contributing to the “omnimarket”?

• Consumer technology products and digital communications

Focusing on Gen Z and Millennials in contrast to Gen X and Boomers, this report provides a data-rich analysis of dog and cat owners as consumers, both generally and within pet product and pet service categories.

Generational trends are of ongoing interest to marketers and brand managers – especially in the case of younger adult and household-forming shoppers, who are in prime habit-forming stages as consumers. The perennial interest in generations has ramped up in recent years as Millennials overtook Boomers as the largest cohort of shoppers, and as Gen Z began entering adulthood.

Consumer generations aren’t uniformed bands parading in spaced sequence through time. Nor, obviously, are those within generational cohorts marching hand-in-hand. Even so, generational thinking help us understand how societies and consumer behavior change over time, however sticky human nature and however diverse individual experience may be.

Millennials were the first generation that grew up with personal computers and the internet, and Gen Z are the first doubled-down, “fully digital native” generation, born into a world with fully loaded smartphones and social media. The Millennial vs. Gen Z timespans are not universally agreed upon, but there’s no question that a game-changing series of technologies were launched around 1977 (marking, by birth year, the Gen X to Millennial transition), as is also true for 1997 (the transition to Gen Z).

The technology timeline and new adoption pace are essential to understanding consumer behavior shifts between Gen Z, Millennials, and previous generations. From the marketing viewpoint, these technologies ramped up consumer access to traditional product and service providers, while simultaneously creating powerful (and sometimes frenemy) intermediaries between them. The same occurred with the virtualization of social relationships, redrawing the Venn Diagrams between personal, professional, and commercial.

Scope of Report

Report coverage spans generational populations and pet ownership patterns, pet care and pet/vet care spending patterns, and consumer values and shopping habits. The analysis places special emphasis on the internet, smartphones, and social media as essential platforms for Gen Z and Millennial consumers as well as pet industry marketers.

Consumer generations are defined as follows:  Baby Boomers (born 1946-64), Gen X (born 1965-1976), Gen Y (born 1977-1996), and Gen Z (born 1997-2010). The term “Millennials” has largely replaced the generic “Gen Y”. As of 2024:

• Gen Zers overall are age 14-27, such that adult Gen Zers are 18-27.

• Millennials are 28-47.

• Gen Xers are 48-59.

• Boomers are 60-78.

Report Methodology

The information contained in this report was obtained from primary and secondary research. Our consumer analysis draws mainly on two sources:

Packaged Facts’ Surveys of Pet Owners conducted on a regular basis, including in January 2024. These surveys have samples of 1,350-2,000 US respondents age 18 or over, with the aggregate survey samples being representative of the national population by the primary demographic measures of gender, age bracket, race/ethnicity, geographic region, household income bracket, and presence of children in the household.

The MRI-Simmons Spring 2024 booklet-based consumer survey, fielded from March 2023 through May 2024; MRI-Simmons survey releases correspond to an approximately 12-month roll-up of survey fielding ending in the season indicated. These data reflect a large and random sample of approximately 50,000 adults who in aggregate represent a statistically accurate cross-section of the US population. This sample includes approximately 25,000 dog or cat owners, 19,000 dog owners, and 12,000 cat owners.

In addition, Packaged Facts’ primary research includes interviews with pet market experts and participation in pet industry events including the American Pet Products Association’s Global Pet Expos, GlobalPETS, Petfood Industry/Watt Publishing’s Petfood Forums, and the North American Veterinary Community (NAVC) VMX Veterinary Conferences and Media/E-Commerce Summits. The analysis also reflects on-site examination of retail and service provider venues and internet canvassing.

Secondary research includes information- and data-gathering from consumer business and trade publications; research institutions such as Forrester Research, McKinsey & Company, and the Pew Research Center; and government data including Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Surveys. The analysis also draws on insights and data culled from Packaged Facts’ extensive pet market research database and report collection.

Pets as Family
Pet care spending is grounded in the “pets as family” mindset, which is nearly universal in the US and, less metaphorically, global. Packaged Facts’ January 2024 Survey of Pet Owners shows that 76% of respondents overall completely agree that their pets are “part of the family” – a statistic that barely budges across generations. Packaged Facts January 2023 survey data further show how integrated pets are into our home and daily lives:

• 76% of dog owners and 82% of cat owners keep these pets mostly or entirely inside. In the case of dogs, these figures run higher among Gen Xers and Boomers, reflecting a higher percentage of older dogs and longer spans as pet parents to them.

• The percentage keeping cats mostly or always inside runs highest at either end of the age spectrum, among Boomers (85%) and Gen Zers (88%).

• Among dog owners, the share who have their pets sleep in their beds or bedrooms decreases down the generational ladder, in tandem with the share feeding their pets in the kitchen/family eating area.

Spending Over Saving
The distinctive tendency of Gen Z (especially) and Millennial financial lives is combining financial limitations with a passion for consumer spending, the latter anchored in part by the greater importance that Gen Zers and Millennials place on being perceived as financially successful. Even if nothing is more American than enthusiastic spending on consumer goods and services, current socio-economic conditions help account for this propensity. As explained by Chiraag Mittal, marketing professor at University of Virginia: “When you don't really know what the future holds – or even if there's a long enough future for you – people are focusing on the present and the short-term horizon”.

Even so, youth and hope spring eternally together. Three-fourths of Gen Zers believe they have a great future ahead of them – even if less than half feel prepared for it. And while they have even dimmer views on the national economy that do Boomers, Gen Z and Millennials are much more confident about the arc of their personal financial futures.