Nestlé Purina adapts product range for petrol and convenience

Nestlé Purina has highlighted the importance of the petrol and convenience (P&C) channel to its brand by adapting their product range for the channel.

The company stated that they over the past 18 months they have observed a shift in purchasing behaviour and an increase in pet food sales in the impulse channel, as consumers look for convenience.

“To deliver to Purina’s objective of driving growth across the Pet Care category by providing more choice and increasing accessibility of our strong performing brands, we’ve focused on our product ranges for smaller format and independent convenience retailers,” said Purina.

These changes include smaller pack sizes for the impulse shopper and single serve options that correlates to purchase behavior.

“Shoppers are increasingly moving to single-serve Wet Food in both dog and cat, with single-serve Wet Cat now nearly 90 per cent of value sales.”

Fancy Feast is one of Purina’s largest brands, bringing in $134 million of sales to Australian Grocery MAT and continues to grow double digits (13 per cent) while being the largest contributor to cat food growth.

A category on the rise is Purina’s Pet Treat Range, which is the fastest growing category and the second largest contributor to Pet Care growth.

“Purina’s best performing treat, contributing to the high growth, is Lucky Dog Bones Originals 800g, also the top performing SKU in the Dog Treat snack segment.”

Purina also offered some advice to retailers when it comes to positioning and selling pet care products in-store.

“Pet Care is normally a planned purchase in grocery due to high brand loyalty, but it is less planned in convenience due to a number of differentiating factors, so it is important to disrupt shoppers at the time of purchase and remind them of your pet food offering.”

General planogram principles suggested by Purina include clustering animal groups separately, ensuring strong representation of single-serve products, and to position treats near the middle of the planogram to interrupt shoppers and encourage cross purchasing of main meals and treats.