For the ongoing health of the industry, should pet food manufacturers and pet retailers pull back from the common, long-held strategy of focusing mainly on superpremium products and their purchasers?
That’s a concept posed by Bryan Jaffe, managing director, and John Gulvezan, vice president, of Cascadia Capital, an investment firm that closely tracks the pet industry. In their “Pet Industry Overview, Spring 2023” report, they wrote about what they see as a trend toward the industry bifurcating into two markets: superpremium and economy, “with affluent pet owner spend offsetting declining ownership and lower spend from median pet owners. ”