Porter and the Internet: An Empirical Assessment of Porter's Strategic Thinking as Applied to Online Strategies for Pet Supply Stores in the San Diego, CA Metropolitan Area

Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship, Jul 2003 by Stretch, Robert T "Bob"

The industry appears to be made of up three distinct types of providers: pet stores, feed stores, and service providers. The primary offering of the pet stores is a stock of living creatures. Not only is each breed or type of animal carried a differentiating tool, the personalities and behaviors of those animals are highly variable and require intense scrutiny by the consumer prior to purchase.

These animals are often showcased as display items close to the complementary goods. As Fenech and O'Cass (2001) point out, shopping motivations may include the need for diversion, sensory stimulation or even simply a method of combating boredom. Therefore in this situation, live product placement and selection are critical to the success of the firm by both acting as a draw and a reminder for purchasing necessary complements.

Rowley (2000) identifies three of the major influences on purchasing behaviors: perceived extensive decision-making, significance of the buying problem, and impulse buying. All three factors make the expert assistance and local nature of the pet stores so critical to their success. Most people don't purchase a new pet lightly given the expenses involved, the long life of many types of pets (15 years for a dog, 30-50 years for a parrot), and the social mores against willful destruction or abandonment of "unsatisfactory" pets. The expert assistance of the salesperson helps reduce both buyer tension at point of sale and alleviate cognitive dissonance caused by buyer remorse.

Most ancillary goods carried by pet stores are directly related to the animals. Broad categories include feeds, health items/drugs, bedding/cages/tanks, toys, and books. As with the animals themselves, shipping of these products can prove difficult, expensive, and not profitable for most firms. A fifty-pound bag of dog food for instance would cost more to properly box and ship than the retail price of the item. The nature of these goods may well have an impact on the desirability of creating an Internet presence for pet stores.

"Big box" retailers are similar to their smaller brethren, but tend to carry a larger line of dry goods, a more limited line of live goods, add services to their offerings and appear to have a larger catchment area then the neighborhood retailers. It should be noted the larger retailers also have greater corporate support and cost savings available through volume purchasing, although the observed price differences between big box and small retailers are not that large, and not always in favor of the larger retailer.

The second category in the pet supply industry is the feed store. These "rural" stores focus on large lot sizes of farm animal feed as their name implies. They also provide medicine and equipment for the health of larger domestic and farm animals. Some feed stores will offer young farm animals, such as chicks or ducklings, but this is only a sideline. Others will provide a large selection of tack if their catchment area includes riding/boarding stables or home lots large enough to pasture horses.