• AI visibility

Guide · AI search

How do pet product brands get recommended when owners ask AI what to buy?

By making your products easy for AI assistants to identify, compare and trust: clear facts about which pet each product is for, consistent prices and availability at the retailers owners use, strong reviews, and credible independent and veterinary-professional coverage. Pet owners already ask AI about food and products, and they change what they buy as a result. Because most pet spending is on food and other repeat purchases, the brand named at that first question can keep the household for years.

By Underneath Team Guide Updated

The short version

  1. The market is large and repeat-driven: the American Pet Products Association (opens in a new tab) puts US pet spending at $158 billion in 2025 and projects $165 billion in 2026; food and treats were $68.3 billion, or 43.2% of the total (Global Pet Industry (opens in a new tab)).
  2. Owners already ask AI: in a survey of 2,000 US pet owners commissioned by a pet food brand, 52% had asked AI about pet care products and 59% said they had changed how they care for their pet based on AI recommendations (Pet Food Industry (opens in a new tab)).
  3. Veterinarians still win trust: in the same survey, 71% named veterinarians their most trusted source for health and nutrition advice, against 14% who rely primarily on AI tools.
  4. Repeat buying is where the money is: customers with Chewy’s Autoship subscription produced 84.6% of its net sales in its latest quarter, $2.82 billion (Subscription Insider (opens in a new tab)).
  5. Strong brands can still be invisible: in 1,200 cat food recommendation lists from six AI models without web search, Purina, Royal Canin, Hill’s, Blue Buffalo and IAMS appeared in every list while Freshpet never appeared (Malthouse and colleagues (opens in a new tab)).

Who buys pet products, and what is one household worth?

Owners in 95 million US households buy, and a loyal household means years of repeat orders.

APPA counts 95 million US households with at least one pet. Dog ownership rose to 53% of households, or 71 million, and cat ownership to 39%, or 53 million, with growth led by Gen Z, Millennials and, newly, Gen X empty nesters. Budgets are under some pressure: 22% of owners spent less on their pets in 2025, and APPA describes a shift away from discretionary items toward essentials. That makes the essentials, food, litter, treats and everyday supplies, the core of most pet brands’ revenue.

The value of a household is in the repeat. At Chewy, the largest US online pet retailer, 21.7 million active customers spent an average of $602 each over the past year, and customers on Autoship, its repeat-delivery program, made up 84.6% of net sales. Brand data shows the same pattern. Freshpet, the refrigerated dog and cat food maker, reported to Global Pet Industry (opens in a new tab) that its heaviest buyers account for 71% of its sales, with an average buy rate of $515 a year against $117 for the average buying household. Winning one household that settles on your food is worth several times a single purchase.

How are pet owners using AI assistants before they buy?

To research nutrition, products and prices, and many act on what they read, while still deferring to their veterinarian.

The most detailed US data comes from a Talker Research survey of 2,000 pet owners, conducted in April 2026 and commissioned by Darwin’s pet food, so it should be read as a brand-funded survey:

  • 43% had used AI tools like ChatGPT for information on their pet’s health or nutrition.
  • The most common topics were nutrition (55%), symptoms or illness (54%) and pet care products (52%).
  • 59% said they had changed how they care for their pet based on AI recommendations.
  • When advice conflicts, 64% follow their veterinarian and only 12% side with AI.

European data points the same way. zooplus, an online pet retailer with 11 million customers in Europe, found around one-third of pet owners already use AI for pet topics, from nutrition and training to product recommendations. In Germany, 32% of its customers had used AI to find the best price, but only 19% had completed a purchase directly through an AI assistant. AI shapes the choice; the purchase still mostly happens at a retailer.

Retailers are wiring themselves into these assistants. Google documents (opens in a new tab) that its agentic checkout, which can buy a tracked item once its price falls within budget, launched with eligible US merchants including Chewy. Chewy’s chief executive told investors that a team is “shaping protocol or commerce protocols” for the pet category “with the Googles of the world and the OpenAIs of the world,” and that Chewy feeds in “catalog information, attribute data, content data, vet information,” according to Digital Commerce 360 (opens in a new tab). Petco’s chief executive was more cautious, saying customer adoption of agentic shopping “is still very small as it relates to our space” (Global Pet Industry (opens in a new tab)).

Which questions do pet owners ask AI about products?

Questions that combine the pet’s details with a product need, a budget and often a brand comparison.

We wrote these prompts to illustrate pet product questions; they are not observed data:

  • Fit to the pet: “Best dry food for a large-breed puppy, grain-inclusive, under $70 a bag.”
  • Format and cost: “Fresh dog food delivery services compared on price per day for a 40-pound dog.”
  • Household problems: “Low-dust unscented clumping litter for a home with three cats.”
  • Durability: “Chew toys that hold up to a power chewer.”
  • Alternatives: “Cheaper food with similar ingredients to the brand my dog eats now.”
  • Legitimacy: “Is this subscription dog food company legit?”

Many owners also ask health questions. Those belong with a veterinarian, and a responsible brand does not try to answer them through AI search. The commercial opportunity is in the product, fit, price and trust questions above.

How does an AI recommendation turn into repeat pet product sales?

Through a first purchase, then a subscription or habitual reorder that can last for the pet’s life.

The path we infer from the data above runs like this: an owner describes the pet and the need; the assistant names a few brands and explains why; the owner checks reviews or asks the vet, buys a first bag or box at Chewy, Amazon, Petco, a grocery store or the brand’s site, and, if the pet does well on it, sets up repeat delivery. For consumables, that last step turns one answer into a stream of orders. Autoship customers, for example, account for most of Chewy’s sales and keep growing faster than its total.

Two details matter for brands. First, where the owner lands decides who captures the repeat: a recommendation that sends owners to a retailer builds the retailer’s subscription base as much as yours, so your products need complete, consistent listings there. Second, durable goods such as beds, crates, feeders and pet tech are bought less often, so for them AI visibility works more like a classic product comparison than a subscription engine. Pet tech makers can borrow from how device brands make AI shortlists.

What decides which pet brands AI assistants name?

Studies point to marketplace visibility, professional authority and reviews; platforms do not document how they choose brands.

Observed in studies.

  • Visibility, not just size. In the cat food tests by Malthouse and colleagues (opens in a new tab), five established brands appeared in every list and Freshpet in none, with web search turned off. Across categories, the authors found that prominence went with marketplace-visibility signals, particularly search interest and online brand conversation, more than with conventional brand popularity. Freshpet is not small: by Nielsen’s measure it holds 4.3% of the US dog food and treats market and is the fastest-growing dog food brand by dollar sales. The study shows how an assistant’s built-in picture of a category can lag the market.
  • Veterinary authority and retail scale. An AI visibility index published by a PR firm and reported by Pet Food Industry (opens in a new tab) found Chewy with a 14% share of AI citations across more than 60 pet-owner prompts and The Farmer’s Dog second at 9%. Hill’s Science Diet, Purina Pro Plan and Royal Canin dominated citations tied to veterinary recommendations, while mid-tier commodity brands increasingly appeared only for price-focused questions. The prompt set is small, so treat it as directional.
  • Review platforms. In our brand reputation study, 88.0% of AI answers to “Is this brand legit?” cited a review or complaint platform, which matters for subscription and direct-to-consumer pet brands.
  • Vulnerable categories. In tests of planted fake pages, Luo and Chen (opens in a new tab) found everyday-consumption categories, including supplements, among the most exposed, “where users rely on community taste rather than canonical brands.” Pet supplements and treats share that profile, which is our inference.

Documented by the platforms. Google says agentic checkout runs on its Shopping Graph with eligible merchants. Neither Google nor OpenAI documents how pet brands are ranked in answers.

Trust factors specific to pet products. We infer that assistants weigh product facts that match the pet (species, life stage, size), the nutritional adequacy statement on pet food, recall history, veterinary-professional endorsement where it is real, review volume and sentiment, and price per day or per serving.

How does GEO work for a pet product brand?

By making accurate product facts, credible coverage and good reviews easy for AI systems to find, without promising placement.

Generative engine optimization, GEO, for a pet brand covers:

  • Brand and product clarity. One consistent name per product line and formula, with species, life stage, size, ingredients, nutritional adequacy statement and price per day or serving stated plainly on your site and every retailer listing.
  • Retailer data. Complete, matching listings at Chewy, Amazon, Petco, Walmart and grocers, since assistants and agentic checkout draw on retailer and shopping data. For the details assistants can use, read what product content AI shopping assistants prefer.
  • Independent and professional coverage. Reviews by pet publications and creators, and real veterinary-professional perspectives where they exist. Digital PR here earns the coverage assistants cite; see how small brands get recommended by AI.
  • Reviews and reputation. Volume, recency and replies on retailer sites and review platforms, and clear answers to “is it legit” questions about subscriptions and cancellation.
  • Search interest and conversation. Since marketplace visibility went with prominence in one study, consistent brand demand and community discussion matter, not just your own pages.
  • Compliant content. Product and feeding information that stays within what labels and the FDA allow.
  • Measurement. Tracking product, price, comparison and legitimacy questions across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Copilot and retailer assistants, repeated over time.

What is still unproven about AI and pet product sales?

How much pet product revenue AI answers drive, and how assistants pick brands when they search the web.

  • The best US survey of pet owners’ AI use was commissioned by a pet food brand; there is no independent equivalent yet.
  • The cat food study turned web search off; answers that search the web may name different brands, including fresher ones.
  • The citation-share index used just over 60 prompts and comes from a firm with commercial interests in the result.
  • No public data links AI answers to subscriptions or lifetime value for a pet brand.
  • Agentic checkout in the pet category is new, and one large retailer says adoption is still very small.

Where should a pet product brand start?

Start by checking how AI assistants describe and recommend your products for the questions owners ask before a first purchase.

List the 30 to 50 product, fit, price, comparison and legitimacy questions that lead to a first bag, box or order in your categories, ask them repeatedly across the major assistants, and record whether your brand appears, whether facts and prices are right, and which retailers and reviewers are cited. Leave health questions to veterinarians and make sure nothing attributed to your brand overstates what it can claim. If you want a hand, contact us about a pet brand review: we map how AI assistants present your brand at the moment owners choose, and build a plan to improve how your products are found, described and trusted, so more first purchases turn into repeat customers. The generative engine optimization service page explains how that plan is carried out, from matching retailer listings to keeping product claims within what labels allow.

Frequently asked questions

Do AI assistants recommend pet food based on veterinary advice?

They cite veterinary-associated brands often: one index found Hill’s Science Diet, Purina Pro Plan and Royal Canin dominating veterinary-recommendation citations. But assistants are not veterinarians, and owners should take health questions to their vet.

Can a direct-to-consumer pet brand compete with big retail brands in AI answers?

Yes, in some categories. The same index found The Farmer’s Dog second overall with a 9% citation share, and our brand studies show independent coverage matters alongside size.

Should we claim health benefits to get recommended?

No. Pet food claims are regulated, and the FDA reviews specific health claims. Stick to supported facts and label statements.

Where do AI-influenced pet purchases actually happen?

Mostly at retailers. In zooplus’s German data, 19% of customers had completed a purchase directly through an AI assistant.

Sources

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