And according to the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, China's total economic output exceeded 110 trillion yuan in 2021, reaching 114.37 trillion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 8.1%. In contrast, the pet industry market size growth rate to far exceed China's total economic growth, belonging to the veritable high-growth industry.
In addition to the expansion of the market scale, the pet population is also growing steadily: 68.99 million urban pet (dogs and cats) owners in 2021, an increase of 8.7% over 2020.
The steady growth in the scale of pet owners and the pet consumption market in 2021 has laid a good foundation for the development of the pet industry in 2022. However, under the environment of consumption upgrading of the whole society, the pet industry is also on the road of diversification of consumer demand and industrial upgrading.
From the China Pet Industry White Paper 2021 (Consumer Report), we have gained insights into three major changes in the pet industry in 2022.
Change 1: The pet-owning population is undergoing profound changes
Compared with 2020, the income level of the pet-owning population is significantly higher. in 2021, 46.4% of the pet-owning population will have a monthly income of RMB 4,000-9,999, which is still the highest percentage of the population. The proportion of pet-keeping people with average monthly income of more than $10,000 is 30.1%, an increase of 4.8 percentage points. Among them, the average monthly income of more than 15,000 yuan pet people, 1.7 percentage points higher than in 2020.
In addition to rising income levels, the trend of pet owners becoming more highly educated and younger is also on the rise. This year's data shows that nearly 90 percent of pet owners have a college degree or higher. Comparing the results of the seventh census, the percentage of China's working-age population with a college degree or higher is 23.61%. The former has been nearly four times as many as the latter.
Meanwhile, the data also shows that less than one in five pet owners is a Gen Z. 46.3% of pet owners were born after 1990, of which 23.4% are post-90s and 22.9% are post-95s.
Low-age, high-knowledge, high-income, these three pet owners of the changing trends, for the pet consumption level of the improvement of a good foundation at the same time, but also put forward a higher demand for the industry.
Change II: offline business will usher in the "second spring"
In recent years, online has become a constant theme in the pet industry. E-commerce in almost all categories are subverting the traditional offline stores, coupled with the recurrence of epidemics, the online business has undoubtedly stolen a considerable part of the traditional industry market share. But it is also such a business is recognized as "difficult to do business", but in 2021 ushered in a "rebound".
First, there is the channel preference of consumers. In the main food, snacks and nutrients channel preferences were researched, and found that when pet owners buy snacks, the preference for offline channels is higher than that of the main food, while in the purchase of nutrients, the preference for pet hospitals is higher. Through the data we can easily find that pet owners' preference for offline channels in each channel of purchasing staple food, snacks, nutritional products and supplies is significantly higher than in 2020.
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The second is the substantial rebound of the offline business. In terms of penetration rate, the four offline businesses, namely beauty washing, training, paradise and photography, have all seen a significant rebound in penetration rate compared to 2020. Penetration for training increased by 116% from 2020, while photography increased by 96%.
The recovery of the offline business is not only due to the stabilization of the offline business itself with the normalization of epidemic prevention and control as well as the increase in offline consumer demand from pet owners, but also as a result of the self-upgrading of the offline business to improve the professionalism of its services.
Taking the consumer satisfaction of pet beauty washing as an example, the satisfaction of pet owners with beauty washing services has increased by 7.9 percentage points compared with 2020.
With the trend of chaining offline business becoming more and more obvious, the specialization, standardization, and comprehensive upgrading of offline stores is beginning to bear fruit, and the "second spring" of the offline business may already be on the way.
Change three: non-pet people are bringing variables to the future development of the industry
In recent years, with the development of the pet economy, society has entered the era of pet ownership, the pet industry is booming, but at the same time, with the pet base climbing as well as a small portion of the pet people's uncivilized behavior, the public's attitude towards pets is tending to diverge.
First, the public has become more sensitive to the impact of pet ownership on the public **** environment. Combined with the "2021 China Pet Industry White Paper" (consumer report) data: the public's most unacceptable uncivilized pet ownership behavior, abandonment of breeding, open defecation is not cleaned up, skidding dogs without leashes ranked in the top three. The emergence of these uncivilized phenomena, are inadvertently exacerbate the conflict between pet owners and non-pet owners, but also will inevitably lead to pet ownership management system tends to be more stringent.
Secondly, it is the willingness of non-pet-keeping people to keep pets. The proportion of non-pet-keepers who "like pets" and "may keep pets in the future" is 61.2% and 58.3% respectively, a significant drop of 17.6 percentage points from 2020. From this set of data we can already see the negative impact of the irregular behavior of some pet owners: the attitude of the non-pet-owning population towards pets, the willingness to keep pets, and the attitude towards pet-owning behavior, is tending to be negative.
If pet owners mean the fundamentals of the pet industry, then the non-pet-owning population is related to the future of the pet industry. And such a trend is a great variable for the development of the pet economy. Therefore, the majority of practitioners and related organizations are obliged to take more responsibility in the guidance and education for the behavior of pet owners.
Conclusion
Looking ahead to 2022, with the growth of the number of families and the elderly population in China, the development of the pet market remains promising. But behind the opportunities, there are also variables. In these unknown variables, the judgment of enterprises and their ability to grasp opportunities become especially important.
The China Pet Industry White Paper 2021 (Consumer Report) uses detailed industry data to give every pet industry practitioner a data base for understanding and predicting market conditions, so that enterprises can discover new market opportunities and identify potential markets in a timely manner, so that they can adjust their market strategies in a timely manner, and find breakthroughs for their own development.
Next, the White Paper team will continue to launch the "White Paper Insights" series of articles, using data to speak, to provide you with an in-depth compendium of opportunities and "money" in the pet industry in 2022, please stay tuned.