Petco and PetSmart Business Strategies

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PetSmart and Petco are very similar with their retail pet product stores. Petco was founded first in 1965 in San Diego, California and PetSmart came along twenty years later in 1986 in Arizona. More than one-half of the Pet Stores industry’s revenue comes from these two specialty supply retailers: PetSmart and Petco. The other portion of the industry consists of family-owned stores, small franchises, and small chains of pet stores. The pet store industry continues to grow due to the discretionary income family’s produce and owners’ tendencies to treat their pets like family. PetSmart aims to provide a one-stop shopping experience.
PetSmart has some important key success factors, as this paper will evaluate the competitive strategic assessments. Any company, which will be successful in the pet industry, must have the strengths of reputation, distribution relationships, product and service range, financial resources, product presentation, experienced workforce, and location. PetSmart was the first to expand the selection of value-added pet services to include grooming, Pet Training, Boarding, and Day Camp.
A proactive move on PetSmart to send letters to customers on the recall of products was a huge strength to their reputation. Customers were thrilled to receive personal notifications on the product recalls. PetSmart is a leader in the pet industry, and they are a national brand recognition.
PetSmart has been able to get a balance of services, price, and availability, which is critical when competing against mass merchandisers such a Walmart. PetSmart reevaluated their warehouse style and changed to a home inviting friendly environment. They even cut the store size and stocker fewer quantities of items on the shelves. To appeal to customers and encourage purchases they created eye-catching displays and promotions.
The new concept focus was on the service side of the industry with pet grooming, pet hotel, and training. The pet hotel concept has continued to allow profits continued to growth. The external competition for the Pet Stores industry is expected to remain constant. Offering more innovative, specialized, and premium products and services, pet stores have been able to cash in on pet owners’ desires to pamper their pets.
Petco on the other hand is competing with PetSmart and other pet food stores and maintaining their percentage in the market. The company’s competitive strategy relating to its internal analysis is to expand its market to other animals: Horses, Cattle, and Hamsters to Tarantulas.

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