Views: 0 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2025-11-28 Origin: Site
On November 26, six central authorities including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Commerce jointly issued the Implementation Plan for Enhancing the Alignment Between Supply and Demand of Consumer Goods to Further Promote Consumption. As the first consumption-boosting policy document released after the relevant meeting, it explicitly emphasizes leveraging consumption upgrading to drive industrial upgrading, delivering high-quality supply to meet diverse demands. A specific target is set: by 2027, cultivate 3 trillion-yuan consumption sectors and 10 100-billion-yuan consumption hotspots.
Under the section "Expanding Supply for Diverse Interest-Driven Consumption", the Plan highlights the active development of pet-related products, animation, trendy clothing, and toys—marking the first time the pet economy has received such clear national policy recognition in a consumption-focused policy. This policy orientation is highly aligned with the pet market's growth traits. The global pet economy has exceeded USD 200 billion, entering a golden expansion phase. Meanwhile, China's pet product exports maintain robust growth, with a year-on-year surge of 38% in the first half. Among them, interactive toys saw an even more remarkable growth rate of 62%.
The combination of policy guidance and market vitality is creating unprecedented opportunities for the pet industry. The core logic of the Plan is to build a virtuous cycle where demand drives supply and supply creates demand. This breaks away from the traditional policy inertia of over-reliance on stimulus over alignment, shifting toward structural reforms to resolve supply-demand mismatches, reflecting a profound understanding of market economy rules.
At its core, the Plan's emphasis on "enhancing supply-demand alignment" demands a profound supply-side transformation and industrial upgrading in the pet sector. A long-standing structural bottleneck—oversupply of low-end products alongside a shortage of high-quality supply—has constrained high-quality development. Guided by the policy, the pet industry is transitioning from OEM manufacturing to brand building, from single-category focus to full industrial chain integration, and from traditional manufacturing to smart production.
Supply chain integration and industrial chain collaboration are key drivers of this upgrade. Prior to the national Plan, Zhejiang Province took the lead in October by issuing its Opinions on Promoting the Development of the Pet Economy. It aims to push the province's pet consumption market scale beyond RMB 30 billion by 2027, and by 2030, establish itself as a national hub for pet economy innovation, a major pet food brand base, and a leading pet product manufacturing powerhouse.
Zhejiang's practice showcases this trend: building industrial clusters, advancing industrial belts for pet food, pharmaceuticals, smart products, and e-commerce in northern Zhejiang, and fostering a regionally coordinated, complementary development ecosystem.
This clustered model effectively reduces transaction costs, optimizes resource allocation, and generates economies of scale and brand influence. With the Plan's implementation, the pet industry will accelerate its shift from fragmentation to centralization and intensification. Large enterprises will expand market share through mergers, acquisitions, and industrial chain integration, while SMEs will focus on specialization, refinement, specialization, and innovation, creating a cohesive industrial ecosystem with coordinated development across enterprise sizes.
Digital transformation will reshape traditional production and distribution models in the pet sector. The Plan emphasizes accelerating the application of new technologies and models, particularly promoting efficient responsive manufacturing and strengthening AI integration. For the pet economy, this means traditional manufacturers will expedite intelligent and digital upgrades, leveraging big data, IoT, and AI to boost production efficiency and market responsiveness.
For instance, pet product companies can harness large AI models, IoT, big data, and precision manufacturing to enhance R&D, launching smart feeders, water fountains, litter boxes, and dryers. These products enable seamless connectivity with smart terminals for pet feeding, drying, and cleaning. This transformation extends beyond product innovation to supply chain management and marketing channels, fostering a more flexible, efficient, and transparent supply chain system.
Another key aspect of industrial upgrading is technology-driven product innovation and quality enhancement. The Plan's push to expand supply of distinctive and new products translates to in-depth exploration of niche segments in pet food, pharmaceuticals, smart products, and services. In pet food, enterprises are encouraged to develop formula-based and functional foods tailored to different breeds, ages, and health conditions, catering to specialized and personalized market demands. In pet supplies, smart wearables have emerged as a new battleground. Companies can integrate sensors, communication modules, and positioning chips to analyze pet behavior and health status, developing smart collars, harnesses, and ankle bands for real-time monitoring and data interaction. Behind this innovation and quality improvement lies strengthened technological capabilities and improved quality standards, shifting China's pet industry from price competition to value competition.
With the Plan's implementation, the pet consumption market is witnessing trends toward refinement, specialization, and emotionalization. Policy-driven consumption upgrading is shifting pet consumption from basic survival needs to developmental and experiential demands, evolving from single-product purchases to integrated "product+service" and "product+experience" consumption. This transformation not only expands market scale but also reshapes consumption structure and implications.
Diversified consumer groups and stratified demands are defining features of the current market. Guided by the Plan's focus on matching diverse consumer needs, the pet market will further segment, offering tailored products and services for different pet owners, pet types, and life stages. Among consumers, Gen Z, seniors, and single individuals exhibit distinct preferences and values.
Beyond traditional dogs and cats, niche markets for birds, aquatic pets, and exotic pets are growing rapidly. This stratification compels enterprises to abandon one-size-fits-all mass market strategies, adopting refined, personalized positioning and product strategies to build core competitiveness in specific niches.
The pet consumption structure is shifting from product-dominated to a balanced mix of products and services. Traditional pet spending centered on food and supplies, but service consumption is gaining increasing share. Zhejiang's earlier policy, which emphasizes regulating pet-related services, aligns with this trend, promoting standardized development of pet insurance, boarding, grooming, training, photography, and safe disposal services. Within service consumption, professional segments like pet healthcare, training, and insurance are experiencing rapid growth, emerging as new consumption hotspots. Additionally, new experiential consumption formats, such as pet-friendly restaurants, pet travel, and pet photography, are continuously emerging, enriching the scope of pet consumption.
Despite dual drivers of favorable policies and strong market demand, the pet economy faces significant challenges. During the Plan's implementation, we must guard against superficial technological adoption, misalignment between standards and market needs, and fragmented policies—issues that are particularly acute in the pet sector.
As an emerging industry, the pet sector suffers from shortcomings in standardization, regulation, and talent development, demanding urgent resolution through institutional innovation and policy guidance. Key challenges include: low industry concentration with numerous SMEs trapped in homogeneous competition; severe shortages of specialized talents, especially high-end service providers like veterinarians, trainers, and nutritionists; and reckless consumption and over-anthropomorphism among some consumers, which may harm pet physical and mental health.
To address these challenges, the pet economy must adopt a development path guided by market forces, government oversight, innovation-driven growth, and regulated expansion. Enterprises should focus on niche segments such as pet healthcare, smart products, and service experiences, avoiding low-level redundant development. In innovation, they should increase R&D investment, collaborate with universities and research institutions, and build an integrated industry-academia-research-application system. At the policy level, sustained support is needed: providing incentives for R&D, e-commerce, and brand building, while expediting the establishment of industry standards and regulatory mechanisms.
