My goal with this presentation is for attendees to better understand how they fit into the current state of the pet retail industry backed by brand best practices, our consumer survey insights, and industry forecasts, and with that understanding can implement identified best practices into their companies and retailer relationships.

Our team works with hundreds of brands in the pet industry across retail channels (Pet Specialty, Mass, eCommerce, Dollar, Grocery, etc.), allowing us to glean best practices, key inflection points and insights in the pet food space in real time. Our partners use our relationships and subsequent data as a pulse check to ensure they are allocating resources correctly, engaging in effective promotional strategies, and forecasting in line with the industry.

Sharing information with experts in the pet food industry is what I do everyday – whether that be through presentations like this, published work, webinars, podcasts, etc. I look forward to engaging with this audience to expand upon the Cleveland Research Pet Insight Council’s reach as I share our insights and key takeaways for 2024.

Today, we see strength in the Mass Channel, specifically Walmart, as well as eCommerce (Amazon & Chewy) as pet consumers look to value-oriented retailers when making pet food purchases. This requires pet food brands to have an omnichannel strategy, engaging with pet parents both in store and online, articulating their value propositions and addressing key consumer concerns like food quality, health, nutrition and value. We see this trend continuing throughout 2024 and into 2025 as Mass and eCommerce retailers make meaningful investments into their pet food offerings.