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New market research from Euromonitor International has reported differing effects throughout Europe of on the petfood market, due to inflation and the Ukraine conflict.
Retailers and suppliers have struggled to maintain online availability, since supply chain disruptions due to the ongoing war in Ukraine have impacted the availability of dog and cat food all across Europe. It has also increased competition for commodity goods. Consistent availability is a struggle for online retailers, resulting in rising petfood costs for pet owners.
The UK saw an 8 percent decline in the number of available SKUs, however Germany and France were hit harder due to closer proximity to Ukraine and challenges in product procurement. Germany’s available SKUs dropped by 39 percent and France’s by 35 percent.
Both Poland and Czech Republic have seen an increase in refugees, and therefore an additional demand on their pet care supply chain. These two countries have experienced a significant reduction in online availability, since finished products and Raw materials sourced from Ukraine and Russia are limited.
The highest online increase in petfood prices occurred in France due to a drop in availability, with prices rising across all SKUs. While the unit price increased on average by 21 percent for seven countries (UK, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic), France experienced a 31 percent average increase for all cat and dog food categories. The effects of this are evident in France as there has been an increase of 6 percent in dog abandonment.
This has sparked competition in France for leading players to have lower than average prices to cater to these challenges. General retailers in France (such as Carrefour) saw much higher increases in unit price (on average 43 percent), compared to France’s petfood specialists. Petfood specialists tend to cater to growing and ever changing consumer concerns when it comes to their pet needs.
Euromonitor International used their e-commerce tracking tool, ‘Via’, to look at online prices and availability for stock keeping units (SKUs), which aided in easily identifying trends in the market and providing strategic and tactical recommendations. The data for this report was extracted in November 2022, and covers over 2000 online retailers, in 80 countries across 11 consumer goods industries.
The report highlights how important it is to monitor online prices, availability, promotions and ratings to have a good insight into how price increases manifest themselves and affect companies’ reactions.
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