Make it simple, make it complex: The pet food dichotomy

The balancing act between providing what your pet food customers are asking for and doing it in a way that doesn’t overwhelm them can be tricky in the current saturated pet market.

Beaton Headshot New Headshot
Pet owners seem to want plenty of choices when it comes to what they feed their animals … but too many of those choices can make decisions more difficult. | (101cats | iStock.com)
Pet owners seem to want plenty of choices when it comes to what they feed their animals … but too many of those choices can make decisions more difficult. | (101cats | iStock.com)

How many decisions do you think you make in a single day? Tens? Hundreds? Thousands? The internet will try to convince you that the average human makes roughly 35,000 decisions per day, but it seems no one quite knows what study that number may have come from. Still, I made at least a dozen choices just to write this first paragraph, and this editorial is just one of the many tasks on my plate for the day.

There is ample evidence that “choice overload” is a real thing that happens to the human brain, and it makes us terrible at following through on decisions we need to make.

“We found that although the human brain finds the concept of choice — or even an abundance of choice — attractive, too many options make it difficult for our brains to process, evaluate and compare these choices,” said Elena Reutskaja, associate professor of marketing at IESI Business School at the University of Navarra in Spain, in a 2018 piece on “Why the human brain struggles with ‘plenty of choice’.”

Too much choice in the pet space?

Pet owners want a lot from their pet food brands. They want primary proteins that suit what they believe is best for their animal. They want grains — or they don’t. They want something customized, but it has to be easy to understand. They want functional formulas, but with simply named ingredients. And perhaps above all, they want convenience. Dry food, wet food, toppers, treats, supplements … no one can say the industry isn’t doing its best to comply with these myriad desires. But discussions always seem to come back to customer confusion and how the industry can help with that, too.

This month’s cover profile (p. 20) has made simplicity its business foundation, wanting to help pet owners cut through the confusion of a massive market. E-commerce, the unofficial business word for 2021 (p. xx), may be a valuable tool in centralizing information and products. There will never a be a shortage of choices in the pet market because consumer needs are constantly evolving, but it’s important to make sure your message isn’t just adding to the pet food chorus.

Page 1 of 324
Next Page