Snacking：a human trait passed on to our pets?

By Corrinne Goenee

info@innovaction.nl

We have had a close look at snacks in both the human animal world, using trend data derived from the World Innovation Scanxtc database.

Of course there is a huge variety in snacks for us humans. Both sweet and savoury snacks offer us a great amount of choice. What does "snacks" define? There are the sweet kinds (crackers, chips). This last category also contains meat snacks (small sausages etc.)

When we look at how the snacking products are trend coded, a few things cone up clearly：

Candy scores very high on the trend Fun, as is to be expected. Surprisingly however, these same sweets also score high on Health & Fitness. This is mainly due to health- or energy claims. Cookies tend to aim at Diet and Convenience (Easy to Handle), not so much on Fun.

The savoury snacks score high on trends Health & Fitness, Diet and Easy to Handle, the Meat & Delicatessen part of this group of savoury snacks has a relatively high trend coding of Sophistication and Time Saving.

A check on pet food snacks shows that in 2003 the main trend was Health & Fitness：nutritional value, for teeth, diet etc. Next are the trends Fun and Easy to Handle, followed by Natural/Organic, Sophistication and Variety.

In 2002 the trends were not so well spread：mostly Fun, followed closely by Health & Fitness. Only a small amount of products were classified as Variety of Easy to Handle.

What we see here is that in pet food snacks the Health & Fitness claims come first. Apparently we think that when we give our animal friends a treat, it may as well do them good besides being enjoyable. However, when humans snack, the functional claim most found is Diet, we don't aim at other functional possibilities.

We only find Health & Fitness claims in one human snacks category：sweets. There is gum for strong teeth, sweets with added vitamins or sweets for good eyesight.

The main similarity between the human and pet snacks is the amount of fun concerned. Most sweet snacks are aimed at children, hence the fun aspect. We seem to think fun is also important for our pets. Do we tend to think of our pets as being "just like kids"?

We know that not everything we humans eat is good for our pets, but what about the other way around? We give the pets treats that are good for them as well as being tasty.

An interesting concept is Shareables, a treat that is meant for both humans and pets. The idea is that snacking can now be enjoyed together. There are cookies available in flavours aimed at different kind of pets from hamsters to horses, as well as fruit flavoured chewy sweets. There is also a water bottle available that has a sports cap for us and a bowl for the dog.

Taking this concept one step further is the "Oh my dog!" perfume, made for people and pets. The question is：do we want to smell like our pets, or our pets to smell like us?

We do see opportunities for the pet snack market：the latest trend in human snacks is to aim for "lasting energy", as in Prince by Lu.

A well known aspect of people snacks is to look at other cultures for inspiration for flavours (for example the Mediterranean range by Lay's). this is a completely new concept in snacks for pets. We feel that the developments in snacks for kids should be closely watched, as this segment is a good source of trend information.

PETS International Magazine (ISSUE 3,2004)