The important aim of business pet meals is to supply full and balanced diet for companion animals. In that sense, well being has at all times been a guiding attribute of pet meals. Nonetheless, well being and wellness have expanded past primary diet as pet house owners search to enhance pets’ high quality of life and longevity. The COVID-19 pandemic additional fueled curiosity in meals that enhance well being and resilience. Contemplating the significance of well being and wellness claims as one of many dominant traits in pet meals, a bunch of researchers at Kansas State College studied which particular traits associated to pet house owners’ paying extra for a product.
Worth premiums and reductions on pet meals
The scientists recognized three attributes related to value premiums and three with value reductions. Attributes associated to 1. digestion, 2. pores and skin and coat and three. immune help had larger costs relative to different merchandise. The highest value premium related to a well being attribute was allergy aid, which had a 14.5% to 22.7% premium when included in a product.
“This means that there’s a potential for pet meals corporations to extend their product income by providing merchandise that embrace these product attributes at a premium,” the researchers wrote in AgEcon Search. They introduced their outcomes on the 2024 Agricultural and Utilized Economics Affiliation annual assembly held in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA on July 28-30. Lonnie Hobbs Jr., assistant professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State College, led the crew.
However, value reductions had been related to attributes associated to muscle and joint, dental, and nutritional vitamins/minerals.
“The reductions related to these attributes probably point out the presence of mentioned attributes in decrease high quality and/or priced merchandise,” the researchers wrote. “Nonetheless, the method on this examine fails to establish if the variation in value premiums is motivated by provide chain value to supply the attributes and/or buyer demand for mentioned product attributes. Subsequently, additional analysis is required to isolate these results and supply additional clarification on the ‘why’ driving the variations in costs.”
The researchers’ evaluation used a dataset of retail value data obtained from Chewy.com, together with retail costs, model data, product kind and kind, packaging dimension, main components and health-related attributes for 1,598 dry pet food merchandise listed on Chewy’s web site as of January 3, 2023.
