It’s a dog’s life: how affluent Chinese are falling in love with pampering their pets
Spending on pet care on the mainland is likely to grow by more than half in the next four years, according to analysts
Shanghai bank employee Frances Chen spends about a fifth of her monthly salary on her poodle Cookie, one of the millions of pet owners turning China’s pet care industry into one of the fastest growing in the world.
Chen takes Cookie to a groomer for a weekly shower and feeds it imported food, costing her some 2,000 yuan (HK$ 2,500) a month. “I want to give him the best,” said the single, 26-year-old who lives with her parents. “He’s our kid. The only difference is that he can’t speak human languages.”
Once banned by Communist leader Mao Zedong as a bourgeois pastime, having a pet has now become a symbol of financial success in China, where consultants Euromonitor forecast the pet care sector will grow by more than half to 15.8 billion yuan by 2019, outpacing the world’s biggest market the United States, which is expected to grow just over 4 per cent this year to US$60.6 billion.
The prospects have multinationals such as Mars, Nestle, Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive licking their lips, especially as growth in the overall retail market slows along with the world’s second largest economy.
Dogs are by far the most popular pets and dog food sales alone are expected to almost treble to over US$760 million by 2019, Euromonitor data shows, as higher disposable incomes make keeping a pet an affordable luxury for more Chinese, particularly in more developed cities.
