Pet Supplement Positioning & Go-to-Market Strategy

Context & business challenge

A leading pet joint supplement was not growing alongside Taiwan’s expanding pet healthcare market, despite strong brand awareness and established relationships with veterinary clinics.

Some clinics had stopped stocking the product, while others had considered but never adopted it.

The business challenge was to understand what was limiting veterinary adoption and determine how the product’s positioning and route to market could better support growth.

Research objectives

• Understand how veterinarians evaluate, recommend, and purchase pet supplements, including the role of efficacy, credibility, pricing, and profitability.
• Map the product’s adoption and rejection journey and compare its strengths and weaknesses against competing supplements.
• Identify strategic opportunities to improve veterinary adoption and future growth.

Approach

• 12 in-depth interviews with veterinary decision-makers across northern, central, and southern Taiwan, split between former users and clinics that had considered but never adopted the product.
• Adoption journey and competitive analysis explored recommendation behavior, clinic economics, channel dynamics, and experiences with competing products.
• Concept testing evaluated reactions to the existing proposition and potential opportunities to broaden its role.

Key insights

• Product performance was not the core problem. Veterinarians generally recognized the product’s efficacy, palatability, brand awareness, and professional credibility.

• Uncontrolled online distribution and gray-market sales were diluting brand equity and damaging veterinary trust. Lower online prices — sometimes below clinics’ purchase cost — led pet owners to question why veterinarians charged more, undermining veterinarians’ professional credibility and reducing their willingness to stock or recommend the product.

• Clinic economics further weakened adoption. High purchase costs, volume requirements, limited margins, and inventory risk made competing products more commercially attractive.

• The existing positioning limited the product’s potential. Its active ingredients had applications beyond joint care, while veterinarians often preferred broader, multi-ingredient formulations that could address multiple health needs.

Recommendations

Two distinct growth strategies emerged:

• Maintain the existing consumer-facing positioning and shift the route to market. Strengthen control over online pricing and distribution, deepen partnerships with pet retailers, and reduce reliance on veterinary clinics as the primary sales channel.
• Create a new veterinarian-exclusive SKU with a more professional and differentiated proposition. Develop a clinic-only formulation while strictly controlling distribution and pricing to protect veterinary margins, credibility, and willingness to recommend the brand.