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The Fight to Be the Top Dog: Traditional pet goods retailers vs. Amazon

eCommerce giants are taking a bite out of competitors’ market share. Here’s how they can bite back.

Pet goods was already on the rise prior to the pandemic, but when COVID hit and everyone spent exponentially more time at home, the pets category skyrocketed even higher. And with many physical stores forced to close, it was a good time to be an online player.

Now we find ourselves in a totally new retail landscape, with many pandemic shopping behaviors sticking around. So, how can traditional pet goods retailers fight back against Amazon and other online giants’ growing market share?

Personalization

This is one area brick and mortar stores can always have an advantage over online pure-players. No matter how conversational the website copy or how well the algorithm reads a consumer’s preferences, sometimes nothing beats a real-life, friendly and knowledgeable store associate when it comes to creating a personal interaction with a customer.

Store staff that are highly educated on your products can be a huge advantage towards providing a personalized shopping experience. Building a reputation built on trust and expertise will have consumers walking into your storefront to find an answer to their problem.

Localization

Leveraging ties to the local community is another way physical retail can create differentiation. Stores could stock locally-sourced brands, or partner with a local animal shelter or charity to give back in a way that truly connects with customers. The growth of raw and fresh pet food also presents an opportunity here. Are there nearby farms or providers you can partner with to offer the freshest local food?

In addition, retailers should diversify their assortments by location based on customer preferences. A pet store in the heart of urban downtown probably caters to different customer needs than one in a sprawling, suburban neighborhood. To give another example, say the surrounding community for one store is highly sustainability-minded. This is a great opportunity to carry more environmentally friendly products for those customers. What it comes down to is digging into your customer data to find out what those preferences are.

The same idea applies to pricing. Different customers in different areas have different needs, and truly optimized pricing would reflect that. By segmenting your stores into zones that reflect customer demand and purchasing patterns, you can more easily tailor your pricing strategies to align.

Specialization

Specialization is typically a strong suit for independent pet goods retailers, but there are still lessons to be learned here for enterprise retailers. Whether it’s pet nutrition, training or any other aspect of pet parenting, customers want specialized products, services and knowledge. Again, this is where having highly informed store staff in place to educate customers and make recommendations can be a huge advantage.

Private label items present a great opportunity for specialization, as well as increasing margins. Not only would you be meeting more specific needs, but also capitalizing on exclusivity and building brand loyalty.

Digitalization

There’s no denying the meteoric rise in online shopping since the start of the pandemic, but as retail reopened it became clear that physical stores still maintain an important role in the shopper journey. The task now for retailers is to create a truly integrated omnichannel experience that allows consumers to shop exactly how they want to shop.

From a flexible POS to curbside pickup to a data-driven channel pricing strategy, the digital experience must meld seamlessly into the in-store experience, and vice-versa. Again, this requires analyzing your customer data to understand how best to assist the buyer’s journey and fulfill their orders.

From a pricing perspective, the increase in online shopping means more customers than ever are comparing prices between competitors. This is where the aforementioned data-driven channel pricing strategy is essential to giving customers the right competitively-informed prices for the right items in the right channels.

Be Top Dog with Top Partners

With increased competition and waning customer loyalty across retail, sometimes it can feel like a dog-eat-dog market out there. But with the right solutions and partners in place, pet goods retailers can transform to meet new consumer demands and fight back against competitors, even Amazon.

Together, Revionics and Aptos form the largest global software provider 100% focused on the retail industry. We help retailers around the world in a variety of verticals, including pet goods, meet customer expectations and drive deeper value with optimized pricing, omnichannel experiences, streamlined operations and more. Reach out today to see how Revionics and Aptos can help you.

About the Author

Maisie is a content marketer and copywriter specializing in B2B SaaS, ecommerce and retail. She's constantly in pursuit of the perfect combination of words, and a good donut.