U.S. Pet Food Report

Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

Pet owners spent

$27 billionon dog and cat food in 2015.

_ PET FOOD REPORT

• Pet owners are willing to spend big money on food: $27 billion on dog and cat food alone in 2015. Approximately 42% of the market, or over $11 billion, is either being purchased online or being digitally influenced.

• As more pet food sales move online and more offline sales are influenced by the digital channel, which US brands are positioning themselves for success?

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

The Key Takeaways

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

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_PET FOOD REPORT

• Niche brands are taking advantage of the level playing field online with strong search results and almost perfect availability across their portfolio.

• Pet food is a high research category, much like we saw in a previous Vitamin industry report. This translates to strong competition to win with engaging and educational content between the top brands in our analysis.

• Some major offline brands enjoy strong consumer engagement, but were outclassed when it came to the amount of items available for shipping.

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

The Market

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

• According to EuroMonitor, dog food sales reached $19B in 2015 and cat food $8B.

• Growth will only continue, with dog and cat food sales forecasted to reach $23B and $9B by 2020.

• As the category grows, the online channel is biting off an ever larger share of pet food sales. The online channel has doubled for both categories since 2010, reaching 4% for dog food and 3% for cat food.

• As more pet food sales move online, brands which position themselves as strong online leaders will reap the benefits with growing online sales. The online channel will also impact your offline sales: according to Deloitte, 35% of U.S. in-store pet food sales are digitally influenced.

$23BILLION $9

BILLION

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

_PET FOOD REPORT

• Pet food is a high research category because consumers are sensitive to what they feed their animals. Dog and cat food brands have responded by ‘ticking the boxes’ and completing the standard requirements and moving the basics with strong online content and exceptionally high number of product reviews compared to other categories. Brands looking to enter the online market or improve their performance will need to do much more to compete in this relatively mature category.

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

Brands indexing greater than 100 outperform the category average; those that score less than 100 underperform.

The HighestPerformers

_PET FOOD REPORT

Methodology: To produce the Clavis Insight Index, CI2, product level performance is calculated and indexed (weighted) against Availability, Content Integrity, Image Presence, Search, and Ratings & Reviews. An adjustment is made for Portfolio breadth and depth. Click here for more info on methodology

1 ORIJEN 119

2 ACANA 115

3 FROMM 115

4 THE HONEST KITCHEN 114

5 EVO 113

C I 2 S C O R ER A N K B R A N D N A M E

Dog Food :

1 STELLA & CHEWY’S 126

2 CATS IN THE KITCHEN 122

3 ORIJEN 117

4 PURINA KIT & KABOODLE 117

5 RACHAEL RAY 113

C I 2 S C O R ER A N K B R A N D N A M E

Cat Food :

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

Orijen claims a spot in the top five for both dog and cat food, while ACANA ranks second in dog food. Both of these brands are manufactured by Champion Petfoods.

Champion Petfoods has taken advantage of the emerging online channel to compete against market leaders. They have focused on the online channel and clearly have executed well.

Leaders of the Pack

_PET FOOD REPORT

Top 5 : OrijenFor both Dog and Cat Food

Second Place : AcanaIn the Dog Food Category

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

_PET FOOD REPORT

Search Rank:The key differentiator for top performing pet food brands.

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

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Top Spot : Stella & ChewyIn Cat Food Category

• Orijen was the third best search performer in the entire dog food category, propelling it to the top of our overall ranking. Stella & Chewy took the top spot in the cat CI2 in part because of its industry topping Search score. Stella & Chewy’s nine items all appeared on the first page of search results. Often times, strong page content is a baseline in order to win on search.

• Paid search rankings may be necessary to leapfrog into the top five.

• Don’t forget: According to Millard Brown Digital, less than 30% of Amazon shoppers ever click beyond the first page of Search results.Clavis Search Score:

The Clavis Search score is based the amount of first page (top 20) results achieved across the six terms used in this analysis.

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

1 NATURE’S VARIETY 132.1

2 ONLY NATURAL 130.2

3 ORIJEN 127.3

4 WYSONG 127.1

5 STELLA & CHEWY’S 124.5

C I 2 S C O R ER A N K B R A N D N A M E

Dog Food :

_PET FOOD REPORT

137Items

34%

Of items appearedon the first page of

search results

6%

Industry average is only 6%

Top Spot : Nature’s VarietyIn the Dog Food category

Nature’s Variety

TopPerforming Brands

1 STELLA & CHEWY’S 189.1

2 I AND LOVE AND YOU 172.3

3 PURINA CAT CHOW 150.2

4 CATS IN THE KITCHEN 143.6

5 RACHAEL RAY 139.2

C I 2 S C O R ER A N K B R A N D N A M E

Cat Food :

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

Is the average consumer review rating for product positive and do I have sufficient reviews?

Ratings &Reviews:

_PET FOOD REPORT

!

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

9:45 AMiPad

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• Ratings & Reviews are critical: according to Bazaar voice, 71% of people read consumer reviews before making a purchase.

• Ratings & Reviews for the top dog brands were immaculate, often with every one of their items receiving a perfect score. Overall, 52% of brands achieved a passing score in the category.

• There was a similar story in the cat food market where all brands recorded strong performance on Ratings & Reviews. Once again Orijen is leading the way, as it was the only cat food brand with a perfect rating. Overall, 47% of brands achieved a passing score for the category.

Clavis Ratings & Reviews Score: The Clavis Rating & Review Score is based on whether an item has a minimum of a 4.0 star rating, considered a positive review by Amazon, and more than 20 reviews, the minimum number for the rating to be credible for shoppers.

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

TopPerforming Brands

_PET FOOD REPORT

Top Spot : Fromm

4.8Average Stars

5000Over 5000 reviews across 35 products

1 ORIJEN 152.1

2 CATS IN THE KITCHEN 148.0

3 TEMPTATIONS 147.5

4 FUSSIE CAT 147.5

5 FROMM 146.1

C I 2 S C O R ER A N K B R A N D N A M E

Cat Food :

1 FROMM 149.1

2 ORIJEN 148.2

3 ZIGNATURE 148.1

4 ACANA 148.0

5 ZUKE’S 148.0

C I 2 S C O R ER A N K B R A N D N A M E

Dog Food :

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

_PET FOOD REPORT

What canBrands do?

9:45 AMiPad

20 reviews!

• Laggards can help fortify and improve their position by boosting customer engagement. See how Unilever achieved this.

• Certain websites such as Amazon give brands the ability to respond to reviews. This should be used as a way to differentiate in a competitive market and mitigate the impact of negative product reviews.

• Brands should look to continue to increase their review counts – 20 is used by Clavis as a minimum recommendation. Given the high level of emotional involvement in the category, pet food brands should consider setting a higher bar.

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

Availability

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

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The Clavis Availability Score: Is the product in-stock and available for sale? The Clavis Availability score is based on whether a brand’s item was in stock at the time of analysis, and available to purchase online.

• In the U.S pet category, being out of stock is not an option. Nine of the ten brand in the top five for dog and cat food had all items in stock during our analysis. Whether they had eight items like ACANA or thirty five like FROMM, all items were in available for shipping.

• Given the competition, consumers can easily find another high scoring product to switch to if you are not in stock.

• Brands will need to monitor availability daily and be prepared to react quickly to outages.

DOG FOOD 88% 100%

CAT FOOD 87% 97%

T O P 5R A N K T O TA L

Average Availability:

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

Image/Content Integrity

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Are you answering the questions they need to select your product?

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

_PET FOOD REPORT

Clavis Image Score: The Clavis Image score is based on how many products had at least one or two images on their product page depending on what each retailer supports.

Clavis Content Integrity Score: The Clavis Content Integrity score is based on how many products had an adequate product description.

• Every brand in the top 15 for cat food and top 29 for dog food have one image where that’s all a retailer supports, multiple images where that option is available. Brands need to be aware which retailers support more than one image and make sure they maximize the ability to showcase their products with multiple product images.

• We saw similar results for pages with high Content Integrity scores, or product descriptions. Here we found that 29 of the top 30 brands in the dog food market had an adequate product description on their product page, along with 27 of the top 30 for cat food.

• What else can brands do? Enhanced content will be necessary – brands should look to recreate the experience of holding and seeing a product in person by using rich digital media such as lifestyle images and videos and content that communicates the value of the right pet food - a healthy pet and a happy family.

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Online Store Performance for Consumer Products Brands.

_PET FOOD REPORT

• Leading brands within the dog & cat food categories were ranked based on The Clavis Insight Index (CI2), a proprietary benchmark of online retail store presence and performance for consumer goods brands. The score is calculated based on key performance indicators (KPIs) that are critical drivers in the online path-to-purchase.

• This analysis was conducted based on data collected from seven US online Stores including Amazon, Target.com and Walmart.com. The analysis includes 90 dog and 76 cat brands and over 8,000 products. The category search terms used for the purpose of this analysis were: “wet dog/cat food”, “dry dog/cat food”, “canned dog/cat food”, “dog/cat foog”, “dehydrated dog/cat food”, and “frozen dog/cat food”.

• To produce the Clavis Insight Index, CI2, product level performance is calculated and weighted against key metrics (Availability, Content Integrity, Image Presence, Search, Ratings & Reviews), which are aligned to each step of the online shopping journey. An adjustment is made for the breath and depth of Portfolio. Brand (summation of product) performance for each Clavis metric is benchmarked versus the average score for the category to produce the Clavis Insight Index, CI2, for each brand. Brands indexing greater than 100 outperform the category average; those that score less than 100 underperform relative to category.

• Data for this research was collected in March 2016, using the Clavis Insight online store audit and analytics platform.

Methodology

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Thank YouTo see more Clavis Insight Index (CI2) reports, visit clavisinsight.com/insights. If you would like to learn more about how to maximize your digital shelf, please contact info@clavisinsight.com

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About Us Clavis Insight is at the forefront of the eCommerce revolution, delivering eCommerce Insights and Online Retail Store Analytics to a broad range of Consumer Products brand leaders around the world. Our Insights are designed to enable you to optimize your distribution, content integrity and online placement in the digital channel in order to protect your brand online and grow your sales.

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