The Problem
A national raw pet food company needed a deeper understanding of the fresh pet food customer to sharpen its marketing effectiveness across the full purchase journey — from building awareness among pet owners who hadn’t yet discovered the brand, to removing the barriers standing between interested prospects and a first order.
The Approach
We conducted a qualitative, interview-based study among fresh pet food customers drawn from our client’s database:
– Recruited current fresh pet food feeders, spanning lightly cooked, raw, and air-dried formats, with the sample balanced to include both cat and dog owners.
– Developed a structured discussion guide to probe consistently across core learning areas.
– Analyzed findings across the full sample to identify behavioral patterns and attitudes across fresh food customers as well as between cat and dog owners.
The Results
Category Engagement Triggers
Mapped the two primary triggers that drive pet owners into the fresh feeding journey, revealing the need for a different emotional tone in marketing.
Customer Profile
Established that fresh food customers are deeply research-driven and self-directed, making niche digital communities and social media the highest-priority channels for reaching them.
Consideration Barriers
Surfaced the specific practical barriers compounding raw food hesitation, giving the product and marketing teams a concrete list of friction points to address.
Trial Incentives
Demonstrated strong demand for low-risk trial options (e.g., samples, trial sizes) to get hesitant prospects to place a first order.
Did You Know...
Surveys tell you what people do. Interviews tell you why. When a brand needs to understand a complex, emotionally-driven purchase journey, like the decision to switch a pet to fresh food, qualitative research isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s the essential first step. The insights it surfaces shape smarter survey questions, sharper hypotheses, and strategic directions that quantitative research alone would never have uncovered.
