US Pet Market Focus: Mass Market Channel Shoppers

Report Overview

U.S. Pet Market Focus: Mass Market Channel Shoppers

The pet product shoe is officially on the other retail foot. After years of pet specialty superstores outperforming supermarkets and discount stores, in today’s humanized and pet parent-ized pet industry, the mass channels are now in the cat-bird’s seat. Two key developments, both intertwined with e-commerce, help explain this switch. First, mass retailers now feature very premiumized pet foods, including on-trend mass-market brands such as Rachel Ray Nutrish and Mars’ CRAVE; channel-straddling Freshpet, whose superpremium refrigerated fresh pet food requires heavy foot traffic and is big in Walmart; and formerly pet-specialty-exclusive brands such as Blue Buffalo and Nutro. Secondly, while e-commerce has grown the overall market and not merely cannibalized, there has nonetheless been an element of robbing Pet Stores to pay Paul as pet superstores take most of the e-commerce hit.

How We Analyse This Market

Focusing on the new landscape of competition and interplay between brick-and-mortar channels and the Internet, U.S. Pet Market Focus: Mass Market Shoppers examines dog- or cat-owner shopper dynamics in the following retail sectors:

• Supermarkets
• Discount stores (discount mass merchandisers/supercenters such as Walmart or Target)
• Warehouse clubs (Costco, Sam’s Club, and BJ’s Wholesale Club).

The analysis provided in U.S. Pet Market Focus: Mass Market Shoppers covers pet ownership patterns, demographics, and cross-channel shopping. Included are current (2019) and forecasted (2020 and 2024) dollar market sizes and market shares for each of these retail sectors, along with historically trended shopper shares. Coverage of pet owner shopping patterns are set in the context of current trends and future directions for retailing, drawing on Packaged Facts’ U.S. Pet Market Outlook 2019-2020 and overall catalog of pet and veterinary industry market reports.

The shopper data presented in U.S. Pet Market Focus: Mass Market Shoppers draw on two main sources: Simmons Research Summer 2019 booklet-based consumer surveys (with a sample size of nearly 23,000) and Packaged Facts’ online surveys of pet owners (with a sample size of 2,000). This data-rich report contains numerous tables, figures, and images corresponding to these key pet retailing channels and competitors.

With a focus on dog or cat owners, this report covers spending, cross-channel shopping, and demographic patterns for U.S. pet product shoppers in the following mass-market sectors:

• Supermarkets: Consisting of food stores generally and primarily of supermarket chain retail banners such as Kroger, Albertsons, and Publix.
• Discount Stores: Consisting primarily of Walmart and Target, these supercenters (also called superstores or hypermarkets) combine supermarkets with affordable household goods and consumer services for one-stop-shopping appeal.
• Wholesale Clubs: Also called warehouse clubs, this channel consists of Costco, Sam’s Club (owned by Walmart), and BJ’s Wholesale Club. Requiring annual membership fees (therefore “clubs”), these retailers appeal to household and business shoppers with a variety of merchandise, including groceries and pet products. Product sizing is often bulk or multipack which—in combination with no-frills merchandising (therefore “warehouse”)—allows for discounted price levels.

The information in this report was gathered from primary and secondary research. This report provides proprietary 2019, projected 2020, and forecasted 2024 dollar market size for each of these retail sectors, along with historically trended channel sales data. Data-rich coverage of pet owner shopping patterns are set in the context of current trends and future directions for retailing, drawing on research for Packaged Facts’ U.S. Pet Market Outlook 2020-2021 (March 2020) and our overall catalog of pet industry market reports.