Reflecting the impacts of consumer price inflation on the costs of pet care, Packaged Facts’ July/August 2024 Survey of Pet Owners shows that 37% of pet owner households increased their overall spending on pets in the first half of 2024, compared to 2023 — nearly matching the 42% whose pet spending remained the same.
The spending bump was even higher for pet food specifically, with 40% of category customers increasing their spending on pet food in the first half of 2024, compared to only 9% whose spending decreased.
Packaged Facts’ survey also shows that price inflation and affordability challenges caused various shifts in pet care shopping patterns:
- 23% of pet households overall have switched where they buy pet products.
- 21% of pet households overall have switched which pet foods they buy.
- 16% of pet households overall have switched to store brand pet products.
Retail/e-tail shopping patterns affected
How have retail and e-tail shopping patterns for pet food in particular been affected? Comparing data from MRI-Simmons’ Summer 2022 and Summer 2024 studies shows that, measured by pet food customer base, the overall winners in re-shuffled pet food shopping patterns are … the overall winners in pet food. That is, the biggest pet food retailers are claiming more and more pet food customers.
Walmart shows the highest gains in category shoppers for pet food between 2022 and 2024, in keeping with high levels of concern over pet food price inflation and affordability. Walmart’s customer base of pet food shoppers rose by 6.6 million households between 2022 and 2024 to reach 21.8 million — largely at the expense of conventional supermarkets/grocery stores, whose pet food shopper base dipped by 3.2 million to 23.6 million.
At the same time, the top e-commerce players also made large gains in pet food shopper base over this period, reflecting their advantages in 24/7 shopping, autoship/subscription purchasing, “endless shelf” of products, and “contactless” shopping. The customer count rose by 4.8 million households to 16.3 million for Chewy, and by 3.1 million to 10.6 million for Amazon.
Breaking out these pet food customer base gains between 2022 and 2024 by the household income level of customers provides more specific perspective on where price inflation is (and isn’t) remixing pet food shopper patterns.
Walmart, Chewy and Amazon
Of Walmart’s overall 6.6 million gain in customer households, the largest increases were among households with a middle-income level of US$60,000–$99,999 (an additional 1.9 million customers) or an upper-middle income level of US$100,000–$149,999 (an additional 1.5 million customers), rather than among those with a lower-income level of less than US$30,000 (an additional 1.3 million customers). (See Table 1.)
TABLE 1: Mid-income consumers were the largest gains for Walmart in 2024 when compared with 2022.
With these patterns, the economic distribution of Walmart’s pet food customer base edged upward toward the national norm, with the customer share made up of US$60,000–$99,999 households rising from 23% in 2022 to 25% in 2024, and the share made up of US$100,000–$149,999 households rising from 14% to 17% — thereby matching the 17% of households with that upper-middle income level nationally.
Chewy and Amazon, in turn, continue to over-perform among shoppers with an upper-level household income of US$150,000 or more, which account for 31% of the pet food customer base for Chewy, and for 26% of the customer base for Amazon.
- Of Chewy’s overall 4.8 million gain in pet food customer households, the largest increases were among households with an upper-income level of US$150,000 or more (an additional 2.0 million customers), a middle-income level of US$60,000–$99,999 (an additional 1.3 million customers), or an upper-middle income level of US$100,000–$149,999 (an additional 1.0 million customers).
- Of Amazon’s overall 3.1 million gain in pet food customers, the largest increases were among households with an upper-income level of US$150,000 or more (an additional 845,000 customers), followed by those with an upper-middle income level or with a middle-income level.
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Episode 72: What can pet food brands do to maintain customer loyalty in the e-commerce space?