In Tractor Supply’s recent Black Friday digital advertising flyer, the first product category featured was gun safes. Given the recent political context for Tractor Supply, the pet market and the nation, this choice comes across as a peace-making gesture to its conservative-leaning customer base.
As reported by Forbes (July 24, 2024), Tractor Supply — a rural lifestyle retailer (“Life Out Here”) and highly competitive participant in the pet market — increased its DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) goals in 2021, subsequently gaining national recognition for these efforts. In June 2024, however, these DEI initiatives were targeted by a conservative social media campaign, and by the end of the month Tractor Supply announced that it was retiring its DEI goals.
It’s a sign of the times. In 2023, other pet market retailers, including PetSmart and Target, became entangled in the culture wars, over LGBTQ+ Pride products. In 2024, particularly in the wake of the U.S. presidential election, many companies have stepped back from DEI initiatives, including Walmart and Lowe’s, among pet market players.
Politics and pet ownership
These developments raise the question: How distinctive are the political stripes of pet product shoppers, and are they changing? MRI-Simmons data show that dog or cat owners overall hew to the national averages by political outlook, with those who lean conservative (at 36%) outnumbering those who lean liberal (at 26%). However, politics shifted towards the middle between 2014 and 2024:
- In 2014, 42% of dog or cat owners defined themselves as somewhat or very conservative, 34% as middle of the road, and 24% as somewhat or very liberal.
- As of 2024, 36% of dog or cat owners defined themselves as somewhat or very conservative, 39% as middle of the road, and 26% as somewhat or very liberal. (Numbers sum to 101% due to rounding.)
In this vein, data across key pet food channels and retailers show a high degree of consistency in the share of customers who consider themselves politically middle-of-the-road — generally at 37–39%, thereby slightly outnumbering those who are somewhat or very conservative.
Pet owners and political leanings by shopping channel
Varying more significantly by key channels and retailers are the share of customers who either lean more conservative than the national norm or lean more liberal (see Table 1).
TABLE 1: Farm & feed store pet food shoppers skew a bit more to the right than average in terms of political leanings, while pet specialty store shoppers lean slightly more left than average.
Tilting to the right are pet food shoppers at farm & feed stores, 41% of whom are somewhat or very conservative, compared to 20% who are somewhat or very liberal. In addition, the MRI-Simmons data show the overall customer base for Tractor Supply specifically skewing a notch further to the right, with 44% being somewhat or very conservative.
Tilting relatively to the left by channel are pet food shoppers at pet specialty stores, 33% of whom are somewhat or very conservative, while 29% are somewhat or very liberal. Within the mass market, pet food shoppers at Target lean a notch to the left, with 31% being somewhat or very conservative, while 32% are somewhat or very liberal — compared to 38% and 23%, respectively, for archrival Walmart.
Cross-shopping patterns for pet food (buying pet food at more than one channel or retail chain) bear “birds of a feather” tracks of these political leanings.
- Mass market as well as pet specialty channel shopping is high between Target and PetSmart or Petco — all of which have relatively left-leaning customer bases, compared to the national norm. Among Target pet food shoppers, 29% also shop for pet food at PetSmart, compared with 18% of pet food shoppers overall. Similarly, 22% of Target pet food shoppers also shop for pet food at Petco, compared with 13% of pet food shoppers overall. In contrast, cross-shopping is low between PetSmart or Petco and the more middle-of-the-road Walmart.
- In turn, cross-shopping is low between farm & feed stores, with their more conservative-leaning customer base, and the relatively liberal-leaning pet superstores. Among farm & feed channel pet food shoppers, only 9% also shop for pet food at PetSmart or at Petco, well below the shares of pet food shoppers overall who do so.
Political outlook, of course, intertwines with the full set of demographic factors — including gender, generation, race/ethnicity and socio-economic traits. With that said, responding to the political mix of your customer base is likely to escalate as a management concern for specialty retailers. In the case of PetSmart, for example, its customer base matched the national pattern in political outlook in 2014. By 2024, PetSmart’s pet food customers were 17% more likely than average (index of 117) to be somewhat or very liberal. And political partings of the way seem unlikely to abate.