The online merchant is closing the gap on veterinary practices.
Amazon.com sold an estimated $1 billion worth of pet food in 2018 as the online retailer continued to eat away at a traditional veterinary revenue category.
The market insights firm Edge by Ascential reported that Blue Buffalo products were most popular on Amazon, making up 11 percent of total pet food sales. Blue produces mainstream diets sold online and in stores as well as therapeutic diets marketed through veterinary hospitals.
The second and third most popular brands on Amazon were Purina (9 percent) and Hill’s Pet Nutrition (8 percent), both of which also make veterinary channel diets.
Altogether, Amazon’s pet food sales from 2017 to 2018 grew by 20 percent.
“Pet owners are choosing brands with the right combination of pet nutrition and shopper value,” Edge by Ascential stated. “Brands that lost market in 2018 took their customer loyalty for granted. For example, Taste of the Wild, which discontinued some of its most popular 15-pound and 30-pound bags and replaced them with 14-pound and 28-pound bags but kept the same prices, dropped out of the top 10 and lost more than 20 percent market share in 2018.”
Amazon’s private-label pet food brand, Wag, generated just $2 million, the report estimated.
Sales of pet food and treats at U.S. veterinary hospitals declined by 5.8 percent, to $1.6 billion, in the 12-month period ended June 2018, according to a Neilsen Co. study.
