Chewy is an interesting case study. Doing really well in a specialized category (pet stuff) when both Amazon and Walmart have pet stuff as well. Presumably a lot of people who have Prime or go to Walmart still decided to make an account with Chewy and consciously decide to buy pet stuff from there vs Amazon or Walmart.
What’s the reason given prices are pretty competitive across all three sites?
A few theories:
1) For certain categories of goods generic filters aren’t good enough to make it easy to shop. Chewy makes it easy to browse by pet type, very specific categories for each type of pet, and category subtypes.
On Amazon or Walmart, the only filters for all types of goods are pretty limited to things like Prime shipping, price, brand, etc. That makes it harder to shop for very specific things like pet supplies.
2) Consumers care more about quality for certain categories of goods like things for their pets (they’re alive!) and will seek out specialists over generic big box stores (which would include Amazon) because they feel like a specialist will be more knowledgeable or have a better selection of goods to cater to them.
3) It’s specific to Chewy. They have built a reputation for having good customer service and people appreciate that.
Thoughts? Can this analysis be applied to other competitors?
Submitted December 08, 2020 at 10:30PM by prplput https://ift.tt/3oxwNfu
