Chewy Case Study
The online pet food and products company Chewy.com found a better way to sell pet products. See how they use mobile marketing and win.
The company was founded as “Mr. Chewy” in 2011 and hired former employees from Amazon, PetSmart, Whole Foods, and Wayfair. They lost money the first year, but by 2016 received venture capital funding and had revenues of $2 Billion and captured 51% of online pet food and cat litter sales in the US. They were acquired by PetSmart in 2017 for $3.35 billion, the largest ever acquisition of an e-commerce business at the time. They have distribution centers in Florida and Arizona.
“Find the best for your pet,” says Chewy.com’s mobile app. They offer a 30% savings with Autoship, on the schedule you choose. All can be done on the mobile app. Chewy.com is for pet lovers who want only the best quality for their pets. They recognize their customers are always on the go, so the mobile app works for their lifestyle. They offer fast and customized delivery. They stress the benefits of not carrying a 50 lb bag of dog food to your car. Instead, they deliver to your home.
Questions
- What did Chewy.com offer to mobile customers?
- If you were the CMO for Chewy.com, what mobile marketing strategies for existing products would you consider to grow your revenues?
- How does Chewy.com grow their company past pet food and litter products?
- What did Chewy.com offer to mobile customers?
Chewy.com offers convenience to mobile customers. While other schedules hold up most customers, the mobile app allows them to purchase food products for their pets. With fast and customized delivery services, customers are saved from the hustle of visiting the shop to purchase pet foods (Becker et al., 2016). Besides, they can visit the app anytime from their comfort to get updated on the latest products and other available services. Downloading the app is also free, so the customers do not pay subscription money. It also saves them the hectic need to carry heavy bags of pet food to their cars. The company delivers the products to the customers upon purchase. Such ensures that the customers save time carrying the products or paying someone to carry them to the care. In this regard, they save customers both time and money. Customers also save on money – 30% when they set up their first autoship.
- If you were the CMO for Chewy.com, what mobile marketing strategies for existing products would you consider growing your revenues?
Proper marketing strategies are vital for increasing organizational revenues. In this case, as the CMO for Chewy.com, I would consider various marketing strategies such as SMS marketing. SMS marketing entails marketing via text messages which will enable to send deals, promotions, alerts, and coupons to potential customers’ phones through text messages (De Pelsmacker et al., 2018). This strategy depicts high deliverability since some customers may not have time to download the app in some cases and hence may fail to access vital information. Besides, the push notifications for incoming messages make it hard for the customers to ignore.
Further, I would also consider social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook (De Pelsmacker et al., 2018). These would allow creating personal connections with customers through messages and comments, especially regular customers (Conway & Saker, 2018). With such connection, I will regularly update them on new deals and communicate their concerns. I will also be able to create an audience with demographic information, set budgets, campaign goals, and durations. Such will enhance the company’s brand through recommendations and referrals.
Another strategy I would consider is location-based marketing which uses the GPS function on smartphones.