Petco Marketing Case Study
Everyone has heard of or seen a Petco. It’s always fun to go
inside and look at the animals or beg your parent for a cute pet. They’ve been
in operation since 1965 selling small animals like mice, rats, gerbils,
hamsters, chinchillas and ferrets, reptiles like ball pythons, leopard geckos,
chameleons, monitors, and many kinds of fish as well. They have a huge
selection of pet supplies both online and in-stores. They also have pet
grooming, dog training, and small veterinary services at some locations. Petco
is one of the leading pet supplies retailers, second in the country only to its
counterpart Petsmart. This company strives to provide full animal services in
one location. Their value proposition is “Healthier Pets. Happier People.
Better World.”.
Last year they released a new marketing campaign focusing on
the tagline “All About Pets” they released a few commercials and planed more
event for store locations. This commercial doesn’t show the line “All About
Pets” but does show many scenes of employees helping mostly dogs and cats. This
has a sweet message but to me this commercial is completely biased to their
claim that their company is “All About Pets”. The commercial doesn’t once show
a reptile or fish in it, while if you go into the store a huge section of it is
live fish, reptiles and small animals on display for sale. These animals are
born and raised to be sold in these store and takes up about half of the physical
space of their store, so why were they not included in this advertising at all?
They’ve released many other commercials with this campaign and again they don’t
show any reptiles and hardly show any small animals or birds. These stores don’t
usually have cats and dogs for sale or adoption at their stores, only at adoption
events which are great but they don’t provide cats or dogs just supplies for
them. So it is clear now that their main focus is cats and dogs and not "all
pets" like they claim. This brings me to my main point about this company, which
is that they don’t care about animals, only money. On their commercial they
promote dogs and cats because most of their revenue comes from the sales of
supplies and food for dogs and cats. Because of this the live animal in their
care suffer significantly.
In 2016 a PETA eyewitness documental thousands of
animals in horrible conditions at a place called Holmes Farm who, at the time,
provided reptiles and small animals for Petco and Petsmart. There is a video
that shows all kinds of animal abuse and just horrible health practices. Many sick
animals were refused veterinary care and left to die in their tiny over crowded
cages. Many cages were crammed full with animals and those that did perish were
left in their cages for days infecting other animals. Although it isn’t wrong
to raise mice and rats for snake food, because everything has to eat, but they
were euthanized by being through in freezers and gas chambers while still alive.
The article and video by PETA really shed some light on the crimes that these
companies commit, and there has been many investigations into pet traders like
these. This cruelty doesn’t stop with their animal suppliers, the employees aren’t
trained on how to care for animals and because of this they often die or get
sick in the store before they find their new homes. Employees also, because Petco
requires and provides no real animal training for its employees, give wrong advice
and suggest the wrong equipment required for the particular animal to customers.
A good example of this is their use of Calcium sand in animal enclosures, sand
of any kind can and will cause impaction in lizards. There has been many years
research showing how sand causes this yet Petco requires that their animals be
kept on calcium sand and the employees, and care sheets, advise you to use it
for your animal, which over time will surely kill your pet. This company
clearly doesn’t care about animals and they just want to make money on supplies
and poor over-priced animals. Their campaign “All About Pets” is a complete lie
and a bad marketing choice if they want to sell small animals. This campaign would be much more effective if they actual followed through with
their claim and made their stores "all about" the pets that they sell. Its' clear by this commercial that they don't care about selling or caring for all of the lizard, snakes, mice, birds, ferret and all kinds of other animals that they provide, otherwise they would have advertised for them instead of only showing products for cats and dogs. This company shouldn't be in charge of thousands of innocent animals lives if they don't even care enough to advertise to find them forever homes.
They If I were the marketing
manager for this company, I would push to stop selling live animals and really
focus and providing everything a pet parent could need. If they advertise for only cats and Dogs maybe thats all thy should carry, why sell live animals but never promote the sales of them. This would show that
they truly care about animals and helping you give them the best life possible.
This company is extremely unethical and their marketing is manipulative and a misrepresentation
of their company.
I’d like to ask:
Would you consider purchasing an animal from
a Petco knowing where they come from?
Do you think what Petco is doing with their live animals for sale unethical or not?
One of PETA's investigative articles: https://investigations.peta.org/animals-gassed-frozen-petco-petsmart/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=zONwVQBvz_s (small animals)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsR-pvUFT3Y (reptiles)
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