As of August 31, pet owners in Great Britain, Austria and Germany can order dog and cat food using Amazon’s Dash Buttons.
The buttons are Wi-Fi connect devices that place an order with Amazon. The devices are designed to be placed near pet food containers. This allows consumers to re-order products as soon as they notice the supply dwindling.
Whiskas, Sheba, Pedigree and Cesar are among the pet food brands with Dash Buttons available on Amazon’s UK page.
Customers must pay for the Dash Buttons initially, but then get a credit for the value of the device on their first order.
Online pet retailers
There are two retailers who account for approximately 80 percent of the pet food sales online in the first quarter of 2016: Chewy.com and Amazon. Chewy is number one, accounting for more than 50 percent of the category sales. Amazon comes in second with approximately 35 percent of the category sales.
As with the Dash Buttons, consumers have embraced convenience. The subscription model for purchasing pet food online has grown in popularity. Subscription sales at Chewy and Amazon have nearly tripled from 2015 to 2016. Of the two sites, subscription sales now account for 22 percent of total sales, up from 15 percent last year.
Growth of online pet food sales
Over half (53 percent) of Millennials are ramping up their online purchasing of pet products, compared with 30 percent of older pet owners, according to Packaged Facts research. Among Millennials, male pet parents are more likely than their female counterparts (at 33 percent versus. 26 percent, respectively) to strongly agree they are buying more pet products online—perhaps not surprisingly, given the early adoption penchant among Millennial males.
