Question

As discovered in previous research, the premium pet industry was not impacted from the recession and continues to grow. You have been approached by an individual who wants to open up a pet food delivery service. Customers will either call an 800 number or go online and place orders for pet foods. The pet foods will then be delivered to the home within 24 hours of the order placement. For an additional fee, the delivery person will place the purchased product in the home and, if necessary, will put the food into a receptacle for the pet owner. The person wants to open up the business in the greater Tampa/St. Petersburg area. However, the person is uncertain as to the type of person they should consider approaching as customers. They do not know who their target market is. Reflecting on the above from a Marketing Strategy Perspective, address the following issues:

Question: Develop a target market for this project. Make sure to address at least three market segmentation variables that would be important to consider and how you arrived at the target market you are suggesting for this project.

Answer 1

In the development phase of a business, the target market can be assessed by looking into various segments and variables. In this particular case, demographic, geographic, and within those then decide the focus target based on the type of pet. Regardless of what these assessments yield, pets are not just pets, they have become part of our families and society, including taking them on vacation, creating a “pet-travel phenomenon that has created all sorts of opportunities for clever entrepreneurs”. Pet owners have niche social circles and perform daily activities and social activities around their pets. “Evidence also indicates that pets play a role in the family system whereby family members establish rules for their management, can have arguments about responsibility for their care, and their loss is often met with grief”. Geographic segmentation is critical to the successful development of the business. The pilots have already mapped locations that are viable for their business. And with the “Airline Deregulation Act (ADA), passed in 1978, that gave air carriers almost total freedom to determine which markets to serve domestically and what fares to charge for that service”. They have the freedom to set prices for basic services, extras, and special offers like any other airline. Demographics are as important as geographic. However, understanding the focus of the multiple layers within the demographic groups, is detrimental to who and why will use the service. With this being said, the focus of the business would be more successful if offered to dog and cat owners. Per the APPA National Pet Owners survey from 2017, 68% of U.S households have pets. Out of the 124.587 million households reported, 84.6 million are pet owners; 48% of those are dogs and 38% are cats. In third and fourth place are fish with 10% and birds with 6%. Millennials make up the segment that is more likely to use the service, since 2016 they became the largest segment of pet ownership at 35%, surpassing baby boomers who are at 32%[AVM17]. Although millennials are leading in this category, baby boomers are a close second and from a statistics perspective, are very important for a business targeting people that travel, have pets, and care about them “aging boomers offer another, perhaps unexpected, a bright spot for the American pet industry. A decade ago, just 34% of adults in the 70-and-over age group owned pets. In 2015 and 2016, when the leading edge of the Boomer generation began to turn 70, this percentage jumped to around 40% [Woo17]