The Spring Festival holiday has just passed, and this year’s major platforms have also released consumption data for new year’s goods one after another. An obvious consumption phenomenon is that the number of searches for pet-related New Year’s goods has increased significantly, ranging from pet New Year’s Eve dinner, pet toiletries to new pet clothes. Bringing “fur kids” home for the New Year is becoming a new consumption trend.

        Data show that in 2021, the total number of urban pet dogs and cats across the country will exceed 112 million, and the consumer market for urban pet cats and pet dogs will reach 249 billion yuan.

        The rise of the huge pet market has its economic background. It is generally believed that when the per capita GDP is between US$3,000 and US$8,000, the pet industry will develop rapidly, and our country’s per capita GDP has already exceeded the US$10,000 mark. The improvement of material living standards will naturally bring about the demand for pet consumption. Coupled with the increase in the proportion of families with many children, the trend of population aging, and the decline in the average family size, pets can provide emotional companionship for children, the elderly, young couples and single groups.

        The pet industry chain also covers many subdivided industries, ranging from pet diagnosis and treatment, training, supplies, food, health care, foster care to transportation, etc. The industry is relatively large and involves other derivative industries.

        Result in, some investors believe that the pet industry will have a lot of room for growth in the future. After all, in terms of the total number of pets, the penetration rate of pets in my country is not high, far lower than that of developed countries. In recent years, the pet industry has received high attention. According to the data from Tianyancha , there are currently more than 382,000 pet product companies in China, and the average annual growth rate of registration in the past five years (2018-2022) has reached 34.9%.

        However, due to the impact of urban population density and housing structure, the penetration rate of pets in urban households in my country cannot be completely compared with that in developed countries, and pets are mostly small in size. This means that we should not overestimate the future increase of the total number of pets, but value the increase in total consumption. As income increases, consumers will be willing to pay more for a single pet. In addition, pet owners will also form online or offline social groups because of keeping pets, and this group will have similar consumption needs and tendencies.

        This means that in the future, the consumer demand of pet owners will be more professional and personalized, and the market will be segmented more precisely, and a new concept of pet consumption will be formed. For example, for the same dog food, pets of different breeds, physiques, and ages have different needs, and complementary foods are even more abundant.

        There is a big market for "fur kids". Facing a more specialized and subdivided market, enterprises in the pet industry must not only become more specialized, but also need to be branded to form a head enterprise to lead the industry. On this basis, a centralized and clustered development trend of the industrial chain will be formed. In this process, relevant parties should also improve the relevant standards of pet industry products and services as soon as possible to promote industrial transformation and upgrading. It is also worth looking forward to whether there are companies that can build a series of services "from cradle to cemetery" in the pet industry.