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Are the cats and dogs in the tuyere flying?

Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Everyone is a product manager” (ID :woshipm), the author of the three young masters.

A large number of cat slaves and dog slaves, and the way of raising their pets “personalized” gradually gave birth to the pet economy. Under the hood, entrepreneurs are targeting the pet business. However, the business of the vents must be done well? Will the pet owner pay the bill?

In recent years, the “it” economy in the pet industry has continued to heat up. The so-called “Spring River Plumbing Duck Prophet”, for a veteran shovel officer with more than ten years of “cat slave” age, has a direct feeling of all this.

• The earliest large supermarkets in cat food are 2-3 varieties. If you buy foreign food, you are worried about fake goods. The more regular channels are often out of stock. Nowadays, various overseas purchases, cross-border e-commerce and domestic production. The rise of food is much more convenient.

• The same is true for cat litter. In the past, it was mostly a kind of dusty agglomerated sand. Now all kinds of environmentally friendly and tasteless plant cat litter are coming out.

• The pet hospital is not to mention, in the past, it was basically a husband and wife wife shop, self-employed, now more and more chain pet hospitals, the more beautiful the building, the doctors inside can go to Japan for training.

On the one hand, it is a major outbreak of the industry. On the other hand, it benefits from the good Internet infrastructure and usage habits of domestic e-commerce and social platforms. At the same time, pet owners are mostly online aborigines (according to Sullivan “2018” According to the statistics of the China Pet Industry Report, the population of Chinese pets tends to be younger, with the highest proportion after 90, reaching 48.1%.

Under the influence of these multiple factors, the domestic Internet + pet industry has occupied the days, places, and people from the very beginning.

In the case of e-commerce, according to public information, the proportion of sales of pet food in e-commerce channels has increased rapidly in recent years. As of 2017, the proportion of sales of e-commerce channels has reached 42.2%, which has jumped to the first place. One channel. In contrast, sales of professional channels decreased from 60% to 38%, and general retail channels fell to 11.5%. In the same period (2017), the proportion of e-commerce in pet food and supplies in the United States was only 14%.

Source: Euromonitor

But it has advantages and disadvantages. Unlike the pet industry in the developed countries such as the United States, the pet industry is relatively mature. The offline consumption is more of a dividend that is transferred offline and offline. China is screaming online and offline.

Because the domestic pet industry is still in the early stages of barbaric growth, and the supervision of all aspects is relatively lacking, the online platform is bound to face some prominent problems in the industry.

As the saying goes, under the guise, every entrepreneur becomes more brave. Under the double boost of industry and capital, the Internet + pet economic entrepreneurship project has also developed rapidly.

How to make your project live with greater probability. And success should be the expectation of every entrepreneur, how to ensure that you can do better than others, and make fewer mistakes?

I think there are a few issues that every Internet + pet industry entrepreneur must answer with confidence.

First, what is the user’s pain point?

As mentioned earlier, due to the immature industry, online platforms are bound to face some prominent problems in the industry. And with the rapid development of the industry, some problems may become more prominent. All of these issues will ultimately be reflected in the user’s needs under special conditions, that is, the user’s pain points.

Where is the user “pain”?

I think the most prominent of all the problems is the lack of professional content and lack of trust.

1. The shovel officer can only ask for more happiness in the flood of information

For the current pet owner, the pet is no longer an “animal”, but is given the attribute of “person.”

Pets have become a member of the family and have been titled “son” and “daughter”; and they have been spoiled for the day, and pet owners are willing to take “cat slaves” and “dog slaves” and be careful. The ground is waiting for the main players.

From the 2017 China Pet Industry White Paper

In the context of Pethumanization, the lifestyle of the pet owner will be mapped on the pet: the pet owner pursues natural and organic in the diet, so the pet food will have the same requirements; Health is paying more and more attention, so the demand for pet medical care is getting higher and higher, and higher requirements are also placed on the type and quality of services.

The first step in all these needs is to ask a variety of questions:

• What cat food is better?

• What is the recommended good cat food brand?

• How to identify true and false cat food?

• What should I do if the newly purchased natural grain master does not eat?

• What should I do if I find a flea in my master?

• The cat is getting small, isn’t it saved?

Corresponding to it is the extreme lack of professional content.

China has always lacked the corresponding standards and authoritative voices in the pet industry. There are no standards for cat food, no standards for pet hospitals, no standards for doctors and medications.

The early pet owners can only get some limited content through various forums, communities, blogs, or carry some articles from foreign AAFCO and WDJ. Among them, there are different voices caused by different standards or concepts. There are different merchants competing with each other and even rolling, and there are malicious marketings of bad practitioners. The experienced shovel officers can experience the “waves and clouds”. .

Taking cat food as an example, what is “dry food”, “wet food”, “bone meat and meat”, what “commodity grain”, “natural grain”, “Hebei grain”, “poisonous cat food”, what is “animal food” Agents, “carbohydrates”, “4D products”, what “no standard”, “running mark”, “Taiwan double standard”, each out is a headache.

Use my own example:

In 2015, my cat was diagnosed with chronic kidney failure. At that time, I almost ran all over the major hospitals in Beijing including the Agricultural University Hospital, and I almost rummaged through the blogs of the doctors. The disease has a certain understanding.

But in the course of treatment, I was forced to record the cat’s indicators every day because I couldn’t get very satisfactory diagnostic feedback.

I think that turning a professional into a pet industry is not the original intention of the shovel.

2. Trust is the foundation of all transactions

In addition to the lack of professional content, another major problem facing the industry is the lack of trust.

When the shovel officers picked up a cat food, the next question is where to buy it..

From the 2017 China Pet Industry White Paper

The above picture basically explains the reason for choosing online or offline.

However, one of the important factors “quality is guaranteed”, although not a high percentage, is worthy of attention, especially for the purchase of cat food.

A few years ago, due to the limited variety of cat food in the domestic market (I remember that at that time, Carrefour and other big supermarkets were happy, Weijia two brands, there are several kinds of cat food brands in Beijing Cooli Pet Shop) Most of them are so-called “commodity foods.”

Many shovel officers know more about cat food, and in the voice of the goods on the Internet, in order to consider the health of the main, most have the experience of buying foreign natural food.

Because there was no formal channel at that time, and the merchant claimed that his cat food was absolutely authentic, but because there is not enough convincing information to let the shovel officers rest assured, the merchants who do a little better can pass Taiwan or The Hong Kong trading company website found that this store is one of his authorized sales points, nothing more.

Therefore, buying cat food has become a matter of pure luck. You have also invented various methods to distinguish between authenticity and falsehood, even including trying to eat yourself.

Later, there were some vertical e-commerce, but still did not solve this problem very well, and even from time to time also broke out to buy genuine products on the discovery is fake. Although the news is still to be verified, the news from time to time has greatly shaken the confidence of consumers.

“Quality is guaranteed (first of all, authenticity, followed by good and bad)” has become a pain that can not be erased in the heart of the cat shovel.

From the 2017 China Pet Industry White Paper

Take me personally as an example:

Before buying Royal Cat Food will try various channels, including online and offline, and since I have the Royal Pet Food Tmall flagship store, I basically only buy from this channel – even if there are some channels of cats Food can be as low as 100-200 yuan.

For pet owners, trust (whether the cat food is true or not) is always in the first place.Demand, followed by convenience, price and other factors.

As Chewy described in his prospectus, its mission is ranked first in the most trusted, and then convenient.

With the development of e-commerce in recent years, many brands choose to open flagship stores on e-commerce platforms, and then there are cross-border e-commerce companies like “Tmall International Import Supermarket”, which can be said to solve many cat food purchases. The problem. However, it needs to be seen that the user’s choice of these integrated platforms is more dependent on the credibility of the platforms themselves.

For those vertical e-commerce, how to attract more users like me who suffer from fakes is a question that needs to be considered.

In addition, there are still many types of cat food in China that have no formal channels. Daily cat food is good enough to be eaten selectively.

But for some prescription foods, such as cats with chronic renal failure must eat kidney disease prescription food, and the Hills KD prescription food that doctors often recommend, there is still no safe purchase channel, I still have to look at two Pinch, three smells, four tastes. If there is a problem with the cat food, it is no different from the executioner for a cat that is already seriously ill.

So, for the platform, it may be just a matter of source and channel control; but for the shovel and their masters, it is a matter of life and death, and no matter how important it is.

The solution to the trust problem must be multi-pronged.

First of all, for the user’s doubts about the true and the false, there must be a discouragement of the strong man, from the source and the supply chain to ensure.

Second, we must establish a standardized internal operating system.

A lot of times, users may only have some doubts about listening to some news on the Internet, but at this time, the customer service staff will come back with an unprofessional or sloppy reply, which may actually push the user to the opposite side.

Finally, we can also better capture the trust of our users through professional services and community help platforms.

Because women occupy an absolute majority of women, and women’s consumption concept is more perceptual, they prefer to communicate online and be influenced by other users’ opinions. Many times, it’s not that you don’t provide evidence to trust them, but you don’t give them a feeling of trust.

I still take my own example:

There are two ways to buy cat food online for a while, vertical e-commerce and Tmall brand flagship stores. Generally, I will see which activities or discounts I buy from, but there is a time when a certain brand of cat food has a bad news in the vertical electricity business. My lover will decisively decide to buy only from the Tmall brand flagship store. , no matter how much the price difference.

As a male consumer, I saw that sometimes the price difference of 100-200 is really unwilling. I tried to use “these vertical e-commerce is authorized by the manufacturer, it is formal”. “This cat food has a security code. , support query “” vertical e-commerceI have been doing it for many years and I am very formal.” These reasons are to persuade. But under the guidance of the idea that the lover “will rather buy a thousand, never let the masters take risks”, there is still no fruit, even for stray cats. Cat food.

Therefore, in addition to the above-mentioned problem of fundamentally solving the true and false supply from the source and supply chain, the e-commerce platform must pay attention to the interaction with the user, and can pass some professional content-based services and communities. User interaction, truly understand their confusion and appeals, and gradually dispel their inner doubts with a very professional attitude and response.

Everyone can think about it. Many times, why do pet shops near the community get everyone’s trust? In fact, you have not checked his purchase channels and certificates. More is based on the trust between people because He has been here for more than ten years, and everyone is very familiar with it. Trust is gradually established through contact.

In this regard, you can learn from Chewy, the largest vertical pet e-commerce company in the United States. It takes a user-centric philosophy and provides a hyper-user-expected experience with every contact to gain the trust of users and see it as a key factor in distinguishing themselves from other competitors.

Chewy has established a professional customer service team of over 10,000 people in 12 regions across the United States to provide users with 7*24 hours of professional and caring service.

Chewy asked his customer service staff to love pets and provide them with various types of corporate training to ensure that they are able to answer the user’s professional questions about products and pets in order to gain user trust.

In addition, Chewy also captures the hearts of users by setting up files and providing personalized services and care for each pet owner and pet.

Although a lot of money, the feedback from users is very generous.

In fiscal year 2018, Chewy’s NetPromoterScore scored 86 points, while Autoship’s automatic purchases based on old users’ repurchase business grew rapidly to $2.3 billion. Up to 65.71%.

3. User needs are constantly changing

Of course, the needs of users are constantly changing, especially for pets, which are in the early stages of development.

Because regulatory policies, regulatory efforts, and the industry environment are constantly being iteratively improved, entrepreneurs need to keep an eye on the industry’s trends in addition to identifying user needs, as it is possible for a policy change to meet user needs. It has a big impact.

So, what matters is not whether you have found one or two user pain points, but whether you have mastered the methods and abilities to continuously explore user needs.

Find the user’s pain point, then can you start a big job next?

I hope everyone is working on it.Before, I have to ask myself a few more questions.

Second, who is doing business?

1. Is the business of a man still a cat business?

A lot of people think that the answer to this question is obvious. The pet economy has a distinctive feature: the separation of users and payers, which is naturally a business.

In fact, I think it should still be a pet business, or more accurately a business of “pets”.

A lot of people will think that this is not a bite, what is the point?

In fact, it is not the business of a person or the business of a pet, which determines the final product form.

A person’s business means putting more attention on the individual. At this time, raising a pet or interested in a pet is actually a major label for such a person, and ultimately it is a traffic business.

Many WeChat public accounts belong to this category, and many users are obtained through some pet-related content; but in the end, they are not relying on pet-related services or products to profit, but to profit from these people with certain commonality. .

Being a pet business means that we need to focus more on the pets of users, what problems users will encounter in this matter, what help we can provide, and ultimately through this service. To make a profit.

Of course, the business of a person is good, and the business of a pet is not a good or a bad, it is not right or wrong.

But, the key point is: You must be very clear about who you are doing business, don’t think that you are doing a cat business, but the layout of the product is human.

2. Does cat and dog work together?

In the pet economy, cats and dogs are the two most important ones. The life dream of Z generation is “cats and dogs”.

So, as an entrepreneur in the pet industry, is it necessary to serve cats and dogs together?

Although cats and dogs have a lot in common, the difference is also very obvious:

From the characteristics of cats and dogs, the projection of pet owners on them is completely different. There are also many different consumer needs for cats and dogs. For example, cat litter is the most important pet product in addition to cat food, and dogs may have more needs in bathing and beauty.

Even in the same consumer sector, such as staple food, cat owners are more willing to spend money and tend to buy imported cat food; while dog owners pay more attention to price/performance ratio, so this is why many domestic staple food brands start to cut from dog food.

Therefore, the most important thing to integrate into the entrepreneurial project is to focus on it. It is recommended that you don’t want cats or dogs at the beginning. It must be cut from a specific scene of cats or dogs. The more specific, the better, the brand influence. Establish a moat and then consider horizontal expansion.

3. Very popularIs it easy?

萌宠,萌宠——The feelings of these cute cats and dogs are cute, warm heart and cure, which caters to the young people’s pursuit of cute culture, even for those who do not have pets. Both have great appeal and topicality.

In addition, one of the reasons for the rapid development of the pet industry is that it cannot be ignored – the social attributes of pets.

The rise of loneliness in modern society and the decline in the frequency of social contacts in the Internet era have led young people to socialize more and more online, and pets are a very good social currency.

“We are weak because we are lonely, but we are afraid of intimate relationships.” – Sherry Turkle, Professor of Science and Technology and Sociology at MIT, “Group Loneliness”

The coverage of the crowd is wide and disseminative. Is it a very easy thing to get a customer?

Not really.

Compared to the vertical industry, the pet industry may be more likely to reach potential people, but more importantly, accurate visitors.

A lot of public numbers send cute and cute pet videos and pictures every day, and found that it is easy to get some powder, but slowly found that the growth is weak, and it is difficult to find the change, the conversion rate is very low, even Many followers are not their own users.

According to the theory of lean entrepreneurship, what we need to do in the early days is product-market fit (PMF) verification.

You need to find the real users who will use your product (commonly known as iron powder) and use them to verify the following three questions:

• Users agree that the problem you are solving is the problem they are facing?

• If there is a way to solve the problem, will the user pay for it?

• Do they buy from us?

If the above three questions are affirmative answers, and we have the ability to develop corresponding solutions.

So, congratulations, you are on the right path.

In addition, in the early stages of the project, the more important must be the quality of the fans.

Because the project starts, it will be accompanied by a period of rapid growth, and this growth is based on your early users. If fissile growth is used, the subsequent new users are all early user fission.

It’s like a mellow old wine at the beginning. Although the wine and water are added in a certain proportion, the quality of the wine can still be guaranteed.

But if you start with a low-purity wine, with a large amount of water (the ratio of water is much higher than the wine), can you still have a wine?

From this perspective, the amount of moisture in the early inaccurate users or the amount of users,It’s not just useless. (Many people will naively think that it’s okay for early users to have a lot of water, and they can wash out accurate users in various ways.) It will have many adverse effects on the development of subsequent products. Even directly related to the success or failure of the project.

Therefore, for the person in charge of the operation of the entrepreneurial project, it is necessary to clearly understand the company’s business, to find the precise users of their own products, rather than to self-proclaimed users who like to watch pet content.

The standard of measurement is simple. When the boss praises you for doing a good job, you need to know clearly how these users come from, and have confidence and methodologies to bring more accurate users in the future.

Identified the user’s needs, and also figured out who is doing the business, then we need to actually launch our business, which involves the entry point.

Third, how to cut in?

1. How to find the product entry point?

How come to find this entry point?

Here we introduce the concept of a cat’s economic life cycle, which is integrated on the basis of the cat’s natural life cycle and the contact points of people.

For cats, in the short life of about 15 years, they will experience several stages of birth, infancy (0-1 years), adulthood (1-7 years old), and old age (7 years old and above). Each stage has different dietary needs and will face different problems and risks.

For example, in childhood, you need to eat some young cat food, and then have the need for vaccines; when you are in adulthood, you will face problems such as birth control; in old age, you will face more problems as your body’s ability declines. Medical needs.

In addition, the cat economy has a distinctive feature: the separation of users and payers.

Compared to the cat’s natural life cycle, we should pay more attention to the interaction nodes between people and pets.

The following picture is a simple process of interaction between people and pets. I divide the whole process into stages of interest period, running-in period, stability period, test period, and separation period. At each stage, the user’s needs have something in common (such as food, supplies), but there are also many unique needs at this stage.

Next, we integrate the cat’s natural life cycle and the pet pet interaction node to form a complete cat economic life cycle.

At each stage, we list the more demanding points at this stage. For example, the “interest period” will have pet rescue, adoption, etc., and because the entire industry is in the early stages of development, there are A variety of issues, controversy also means topicality.

Of course, only the distinctive demand points at each stage are listed here, as well as some general needs that span the entire cat life cycle, such as pet food, pet supplies, etc.

It’s important to note that even these general needs show different demand differences at each stage. For example, cat food, in addition to the distinction between juvenile cat food, adult food and old-age food; when the cat is sick, it also needs to face the demand for prescription food. For example, cats with chronic renal failure can only eat kidney disease prescription food.

In addition, everyone can add more user demand tags to this map based on their understanding of the industry.

The purpose is to better assist you in finding the entry point for your own products in this industry. According to different entry points, various types of entrepreneurial projects have emerged as the times require. There are vertical e-commerce, there are evaluations, pet medical treatment, and even specializing in pet funeral.

The product positioning is determined by the market entry point, and then the problem of getting the customer needs to be solved.

Before, we have said that the professional content of the pet industry is very scarce, and as the traffic becomes more expensive, many products will be assisted by professional content.

So how do you position your content for your product?

2. Content positioning is close to the product

Products need to find the entry point for the market, as is the content platform. You need to find the entry point for the user population.

In general, because the product itself is subject to business form (such as the chain of pet hospitals) or to specific groups of people (such as cat food, you can not assume that all cats are your users, According to the type and price of the staple food, different groups will be formed. The content needs to be extended on the basis of the product.

How do you extend it?

The first feeling of many people is to go to the source. For example, many people start to contact pets. They must start from adoption or purchase. Even many people will say that single young women are their target population because they have a high probability. Will raise pets, as long as they are attracted to them, can they be transformed after they have produced consumption?

The pet industry is popular, “You just take me home, and the rest of me will fix it…” This is what people who have encountered obstacles in adopting pets.

But for those who do business, don’t have the confidence of this fan.

You want to get users from the source, harvest the user’s LTV, but the whole chain is too long, the user has a thousand reasons and 10,000 chances to jump out. You thought that you had married a child, and before I thought about getting married, the eyes of the male god took her away.

For example, if a pet is buried, is it suitable if you send pets for adoption and kittens to vaccinate every day? The high degree of relevance must be the content of some pet medical treatment and disease diagnosis and treatment.

The core principle is that the content entry point must be close to the product.

But because the content is to make up for the narrow defect of the product user group, it is better to form an inclusion relationship with the user population of the product, and bring the propagation attribute, which is a good content positioning.

After determining the content positioning, how to effectively connect it with its own products also requires operational skills.

For example, many manufacturers who do e-commerce will provide adoption information on the content platform. If they do well, they will even provide an intermediary platform. The purpose is of course that these people will be able to contact their own brands and gradually become Loyal customers.

But many conversions can’t be based on their own wishful thinking. We must carefully study every aspect from the entry point to the product conversion chain, and minimize the risk of users jumping out. The practice of the US pet industry giant PetSmart is very worthwhile. Learn from.

In 1994, PetSmart founder Doherty established the PetSmartCharities Inc., which was used and strengthened by his nephew Francis (the new CEO). Pet adoption continues the American “pet humanization” consciousness, which can trigger the emotional support and resonance of the pet owners at the level of public opinion.

Data shows: From 1994 to 2007, the PetSmart Charity Club saved an average of 1,100 stray animals per day, and the total number of rescues has exceeded 7 million. At the specific operational level, relatively simple to sell large live pets, PetSmart’s approach is: Let potential consumers, those who like but do not have pets, adopt adoptives to adopt stray pets.

PetSmart will work with local communities to form a stray animal support group and provide accommodation for these animals. On the other hand, PetSmart will issue a feeding guide whenever a pet has adopted a pet. Contains basic feeding knowledge.

Of course, information on pet food, supplies and services sold by PetSmart is also included. When a novice pet owner holds this feeding guide, which also includes a link to purchase and service, most people will choose to spend directly on PetSmart, both in terms of convenience and trust.

In PetSmartAs a retail and service traffic access, adoption also subtly enhances the brand image.

– CEIBS Business Review (ID: ceibs-cbr) “pet economy outlet, the birth of industry giants like China can PetSmart,” by: Shi Yang

4. Summary

Finally, what is said is worthless.

This article has no answers, only questions and some discussion and thinking around the problem.

I hope this article can give some inspiration to the pet industry practitioners, especially entrepreneurs; but the most important thing is to combine these ideas to actually test, verify, and ultimately form your unique understanding of the industry.