The number of pets exceeds that of infants and young children. How can brands seize this wave of dividends?

As the number of pets is about to surpass that of infants and young children, the pet industry has undoubtedly become an emerging market with great potential. From pet food to smart products, from medical care to home life, the booming pet economy has brought unprecedented opportunities to brand owners.

"Brands must focus on new products to keep up with market changes."

The era of "furry kids" has really arrived.

Last month, global investment bank Goldman Sachs predicted in a report that the number of pets in China is expected to exceed the number of infants and toddlers for the first time this year and will be nearly twice the number of infants and toddlers by the end of 2030.

1. The aging of pets brings new market opportunities

With the increase in the number of pets and the upgrading of industrial structure, the domestic pet industry has continued to grow at a high speed in recent years and has become a representative "anti-cyclical" industry.

This trend was reflected in the 2024 Asia Pet Show (hereinafter referred to as "Asia Pet Show") held recently.

As one of the most influential pet industry exhibitions in Asia, this year's Asia Pet Show has reached a new high in scale. The exhibition area reaches 300,000 square meters, covering 17 major halls, 7 supply chain halls and an outdoor area, bringing together more than 2,500 exhibitors from home and abroad.

During the exhibition, Tmall New Product Innovation Center (TMIC) and Dianjing Network jointly released the "White Paper on Smart Lifestyle Trends for Chinese Pet-Owning Families", which conducted in-depth research and analysis on the lifestyles and consumption habits of Chinese pet-owning families, and provided reference and guidance for businesses to seize market opportunities.

The White Paper mentioned that a large number of pets will enter old age in the next few years, which will drive a concentrated outbreak of demand for pet medical care. It is estimated that by 2025, there will be about 53.65 million elderly cats and dogs in China, including about 32.47 million elderly dogs aged 8-14, and about 21.18 million elderly cats aged 8-16.

In response to the aging trend of pets, this year's Asia Pet Show also set up the first elderly pet care demonstration area.

In addition, the refinement, personalization and intelligence of feeding and care have also become a new trend in the pet products industry, with huge market potential. According to the White Paper survey, 83.17% of consumers are willing to increase their purchase budget to purchase smart devices that are family-friendly for pet owners.

Second, only by seizing new products can we keep up with market changes

While the overall scale of the domestic pet products industry continues to expand, market demand is also constantly segmenting and evolving. In the face of a rapidly changing market, brands can only consolidate their market position and boost brand awareness by constantly innovating.

However, with consumer concepts constantly changing and consumer demands becoming increasingly diversified, it is not easy for brands to identify the real needs of users. They are faced with a dilemma: if they do not actively seek change, the market will be eroded step by step; if they actively seek change, they will pay a huge trial and error cost if they bet on the wrong direction.

To address these pain points of brands, TMIC has developed a series of digital tools and products based on the Taobao and Tmall platforms’ exploration of consumer demand and insights into the crowd over the years, to help merchants grasp consumption trends and identify the right direction for new product research and development.

As the world's largest digital new product launch platform, TMIC has incubated a total of 4,500 high-quality new products in fiscal year 2024 based on its massive consumer trend data of over one billion users and its exclusive new product industry knowledge base. The cumulative sales of incubated new products exceeded RMB 8.2 billion.

At a time when product supply is in excess and even good wine needs to be marketed at a distant market, brands, in addition to developing new products, are also faced with the age-old problem of how to accurately reach their target consumer groups and quickly launch new products.

The value of TMIC lies in the fact that, in addition to helping brands complete new product incubation and co-creation based on AI and big data capabilities, it can also link up with the full-link resource matrix within platforms such as Tmall U-first and Tmall Heybox New Product IP to increase traffic resource support for blockbuster new products, helping brands to quickly launch new products.

The pet food brand Bernardo Pure is one of the beneficiaries of TMIC's full-link capabilities. It worked with TMIC and Kaijie to locate the trend of the special food track for elderly dogs through big data market scanning and confirmed the core concept of the new product through simulation testing, achieving cumulative sales of more than 3,000 in the two months after its launch and a monthly UV growth of more than 70%.

Based on TMIC's big data, Bernardus found that the sales of senior dog food on Taobao platforms have grown steadily in the past few years, and the market potential is huge. Its mainstream price range is 25-40 yuan/catties, among which the mid-range price range of 15-25 yuan has the fastest growth rate.

Through further user research, Bernardus found that dogs of elderly dog ​​food users generally have health problems with their teeth, bones and stomach. When purchasing dog food, users generally pay the most attention to three key factors: nutritional ingredients, raw material composition and age group. This provides a clear direction for Bernardus' research and development of new elderly dog ​​food products.

At the same time, in the simulation testing phase, TMIC helped Berna Tianchun continuously optimize its product communication strategy, and refined the two core selling points of reshaping bone vitality vs. seven-dimensional anti-aging, directly targeting the core needs of users, and ultimately helping the new product achieve a hit as soon as it was launched.

Xibao, another leading brand in the pet food industry, also benefited from TMIC's full-link new product incubation capabilities. It worked with TMIC to conduct in-depth research on consumer demand, captured the segmentation opportunities of staple wet food, and launched the first staple-level wet food "Trio Cat Cake", which ranked in the top 10 of stores in the cold start of new products, with efficiency far higher than other new products in the store.

In addition to food, pet health is also a topic of greatest concern to pet owners, with deworming being the most common scenario. In such a mature scenario, how can brands tap into more business opportunities? The combination of Frontline and Canxinbao is of great reference value.

Frontline x Canine Heart Protection keenly realized that pet owners' awareness of deworming has increased and that both internal and external deworming has become a consensus. They launched different sets of products for sale based on user segmentation needs, used powerful external deworming drops to drive the rapid growth of internal deworming categories, and successfully topped the Double Eleven dog deworming best-selling list, with sales increasing by 75% year-on-year.

3. Human-pet symbiosis opens up the imagination space of the home furnishing industry

In addition to food and supplies that are essential for pets, more products targeting "pet owners" have quietly entered the lives of pet owners. This has brought new business opportunities not only to the pet industry, but also to the home furnishing and home appliance industries.

Hall E2 of this year's Asia Pet Show has newly planned the "Pet Products and Better Life" exhibition, bringing together high-quality brands and exhibitors such as pet homes, pet smart appliances, pet travel, pet-friendly shared spaces, and original design brands that are friendly to human and pet life, to restore the beautiful spatial scene of human-pet symbiosis.

Compared with the spacious living environment in Europe and the United States, the average living area of ​​Chinese families is relatively small. This reality makes the space for people and pets to coexist appear more compact.

In this situation, how to balance the daily care and health management of pets and the overall quality of life of the family has become a core issue of concern to many pet owners.

In recent years, with the rapid development of smart home technology, more and more pet owners have begun to focus on optimizing all aspects of home life with the help of smart appliances and equipment. From pet feeding and health monitoring to smart management of the home environment, smart life is gradually penetrating into the daily lives of pet-raising families, changing the traditional pet-raising model. Smart life not only effectively reduces the burden of pet owners in terms of cleaning and health monitoring, but also adds more fun and convenience to the interaction between pet owners and pets through data management and intelligent linkage.

Pet owners' demand for intelligent and personalized products continues to rise, driving the research and development and upgrading of pet-friendly smart products in the market.

Take pet water use as an example. Compared with humans, pets' kidneys and livers are more sensitive, especially cats, which have stricter requirements on water quality. Chlorine and other detergent chemicals in tap water may cause pets to dislike drinking water and eventually cause pet kidney disease. At the same time, pets' skin is also very delicate, and unhealthy bathing water will bring the risk of pet skin diseases.

To address this issue, Panasonic has launched two new products: a gas water heater that can soften water and a reverse osmosis water purifier to ensure healthy water for pet-raising families.

Panasonic's two new products are just the tip of the iceberg in the human-pet symbiosis scenario. In the future, as the number of pets increases and they occupy an increasingly important position in the family, there are still huge business opportunities to be tapped in terms of improving the quality of life in the symbiosis between humans and pets. Whoever can gain insight into user needs first and reach precise users more efficiently will be able to seize the initiative in the market.

To this end, in September this year, TMIC will also launch a home furnishing industry map to help the home furnishing industry gain a more comprehensive insight into demand, scan market opportunities, and open up greater imagination space.

The pet economy, a track comparable to the maternal and infant industry, has just begun.

Editor | Lin Juemin This article is written by the author of Operation Party [Liu Wei], WeChat public account: [Leifeng.com], original/authorized to be published on Operation Party, and any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.