Why Does Some Pet Food Cost So Much?

[Robin Fiennes]

In the UK you can buy a 15kg bag of dog food for '9.99, or you could
dig deeper into your wallet and pay '41 for another brand. So why
should we pay up to 400% more for a bag of food - is it justified?
Well, I'm sure there are any number of reasons why one bag of food is
more expensive than another, but I'm going to suggest a few
possibilities which might make a difference to the price you pay for
pet food (and this is true both for cat and dog food because the brand
owners are the same)
First and foremost, and this is putting my cynical hat on, you're
paying what you are because the brand owner has decided that this is
what you are prepared to pay for their pet food. The marketing
department have done their research, millions have been spent on
advertising and creating the right image, they've built up a degree of
trust in the eyes of the consumer and now you've got to pay for that!
Where's my evidence you might ask? Well, let's take a couple of
examples and not from the extremes. Here's two lists of ingredients:



Product 1
Cereals, meat and animal derivatives, vegetable protein extracts, oils
and fats, derivatives of vegetable origin, minerals, yeasts. Contains
EEC permitted antioxidants, colourant and preservative.
Product 2
Wheat, Meat Meal, Maize, Oils & Fats, Linseed, Beet Pulp, Peas,
Lucerne, Vitamins & Minerals. Added Citrus, Yeast and Yucca.
Contains EEC permitted antioxidants, colourant and preservative.


Not a lot of difference in the ingredients, but Product 1 comes from a
multinational with a marketing budget of millions to pay for, and it
costs '25 for a 15kg bag. Product 2 costs '9.99 for 17kg. The brands
are Pedigree and Wagg. I rest my case!
1) Do ingredients make a difference to cost?
Obviously there's going to be a difference in ingredients used (or we
would hope so!) but can this account for such a difference, and does
it matter? Let's look at a couple of examples. Firstly a typical bag
of Eucanuba at '41.99 in the UK.



Ingredients
Chicken: (>20%), maize, wheat, barley, sorghum, animal fat, fish
meal, dried beet pulp, poultry meal, dried whole egg, brewer's dried
yeast, potassium chloride, sodium chloride, linseed, DL-methionine,
glucosamine HCl, chondroitin sulphate, salt, sodiumhexametaphosphate


Now let's compare with Gilpa Kennel at '12.39



Ingredients
Wheat, poultry, maize, wheatfeed, poultry digest, poultry fat, whey
powder, soya oil, yeast, mixed herbs, extract of New Zealand green-
lipped mussel, yucca extract, minerals, trace elements and vitamins,
including zinc chelate. With EEC permitted antioxidants.


Obviously the consumer has to make an informed opinion as to which is
better for their pet, but essentially these are both wheat and maize
based foods with chicken/poultry as the meat source. Both offer
complete nutrition based upon current scientific knowledge with
broadly similar analysis.
More 'natural' and often more expensive foods will tend to use cereals
other than wheat (rice typically) and maybe a single source of meat
protein (chicken, duck, fish or lamb are most common) added as meat
meal, and may be naturally preserved with vitamin E or similar. These
types of food, which can be broadly classified as more hypo-allergenic
are important because some pets suffer from an intolerance to common
pet food ingredients so that has to be taken into consideration.
It is a long forgotten fact however, that millions of pets have lived
long and healthy lives on simple pet food with none of the fancy
additives and supplements that manufacturers are luring us with now.
Unfortunately, the trend is for manufacturers to try and get us to
spend more by echoing the human food industry - with health claims and
any number of ingredients which we wouldn't normally associate with
food.
2) All those fance advertisements: Some companies have amazing
advertising budgets, and that spend has to be paid for in the price of
the products (where else is it coming from?) 2006 saw the release of
the world's most expensive television pet food advertisement coming in
at '1 million to support the Sheba cat food brand.
A Pet food company has broken the boundaries of TV advertising in the
UK by becoming the first company ever to fully fund a television
programme - on the terrestrial channel ITV. Content of the forthcoming
ITV1 factual series Dog Rescue, scheduled to air early Sunday
evenings, is to be fully funded by a single advertiser, the Mars,
Masterfoods pet foods brand Pedigree.
The Dog Rescue series will cover the activities of two animal re-
homing centres, Manchester Dogs Home and The Dogs Trust centre in
Harefield, West London. Despite concerns about moving a step closer to
product placement in TV programming, the Pedigree brand will not be
advertised during the show but it will appear at the beginning and end
of commercial breaks.
Sponsorship of premium events like Crufts cost brands such as Pedigree
huge sums of money, which consumers are paying for in the price of the
food.
3) Research and development: Familiar brands such as Purina, Pedigree,
Iams, Hills and Eucanuba which are global brands spend $millions
worldwide on research and development, employing hundreds of
scientists and veterinarians. This has to be paid for!
4) The impact of the Distribution Chain: Some brand owners are also
manufacturers (i.e. Gilpa) so it costs less to get the food to the
shops. Others (Burns, Arden Grange etc) rely on a manufacturer making
food for them, so already someone else wants a snip out of the
profits. As well as the brand owner, there will be wholsalers and of
course the retailer wanting their percentage. So it is that a bag of
food that costs just a few ' to manufacture ends up costing around '40
in the shops!
5) We love our substitute children! : Yes, pet food manufacturers know
that you treat your pet like a child - go on, admit it!
Euromonitor's research has found that the pet food market has been
experiencing a trend towards premium and super-premium products. This
stems from the fact that pet owners are increasingly treating their
companion as a member of the family (or even sometimes as a partner,
in the case of single households) and as such, expenditure on pet food
is rising. This trend towards premium products has also been the
result of efficient marketing communication by manufacturers about the
benefits of prepared pet food and this has contributed to the
development of branded premium products first, with private label
premium products following suit.
With the pet obesity rate reaching record levels, pet health and pet
hygiene proved to be one of the biggest concerns of pet owners in
2006. This has resulted in a raft of new health focused multi-
functional foods aimed at improving pet health, with product launches
aimed at boosting pet paws, claws, eyes, coats, skin, teeth and even
brain power. Key terms included omega 3 and 6, macro-nutrient profile,
wheat and gluten-free and hypoallergenic. As pet owners became
increasingly aware of the changing nutritional needs of their pets as
they age, 2006 saw a great extension to life stage and lifestyle
products, once the domain of premium and super-premium products. Even
value manufacturers are cashing in on this trend.
At the end of the day of course, the consumer can always vote with
their feet and move to a different brand if they feel that they are
being ripped off!

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