Petco marketplace case study: book a demo to start yours

Petco is a prominent pet retail store chain in the United States that provides an extensive selection of pet supplies, pet food, grooming services, and products catering to various types of pets, such as dogs, cats, birds, and fish. If you’d like to start your own marketplace like Petco, you’re facing a buy vs build decision. So before you decide to build it in-house on top of Spree open-source, consider using Vendo, which is the feature-rich Enterprise Edition cutting your time-to-market to a few weeks.

Build vs Buy a marketplace?

The use of open-source brings several advantages, such as total ownership and the ability to adapt as needed, but these benefits have their own costs. Developing a comprehensive marketplace solution is a lengthy, expensive endeavor, usually taking several months to years, as learned from various marketplace projects.

If you haven’t raised a significant amount of money, you’re much better off choosing a complete, off-the-shelf marketplace solution like Vendo, as advised by someone who has extensive experience in billing clients for marketplace development.

Back to the Petco marketplace case study

Petco, a leading pet specialty retailer, has successfully increased its conversion rates and customer loyalty by encouraging pet parents to share their opinions and experiences with each other. This strategy not only provides valuable product feedback but also enhances the overall customer experience.

One of the most impactful strategies used by Petco is the implementation of Bazaarvoice’s Ratings & Reviews and Questions & Answers services. This approach allows pet parents to learn about Petco’s solutions to their needs while providing the company with essential product feedback.

The effectiveness of this strategy is evident in the numbers: Petco’s revenue per visitor (RPV) rate is 15% higher, and the conversion rate is 8% higher among visitors who engage with reviews compared to those who do not.

The influence of user-generated content is further underscored by the fact that even a single review can markedly improve conversion rates. For instance, dog food products with one review have a 20% higher conversion rate than those without any reviews. This positive trend continues as the number of reviews increases, demonstrating that consumer confidence in purchasing decisions grows with more user-generated content.

Moreover, Petco’s platform hosts a vast array of reviews, primarily sourced from brands within the Bazaarvoice Network. This extensive network, which includes more than 6,000 brand and retail sites, accounts for nearly 80% of Petco’s total review volume.

Additionally, Petco’s dedication to engaging with customers is evident in its efforts to answer consumer queries, with more than 300 brand partners participating in online conversations through Bazaarvoice Connections. This initiative ensures that 94% of all questions on Petco’s site receive at least one response, further cementing Petco’s commitment to fostering a strong relationship with pet parents.

How to emulate Petco marketplace success?

If you aim to mirror the success of Petco, consider getting your marketplace up and running quickly, within weeks, not months. Assess how your product selection resonates with your audience’s needs. Keep tweaking your methods for gaining customers, using real-world feedback as your guide.

Experiment with the market before you fully invest in building it yourself.

Here’s what you’d be getting with a Vendo free trial:

Book a marketplace demo call: We’ll set up your demo marketplace and populate it with products, so you could give it a try and start selling in 14 days
Customize your Storefront: Use the drag & drop page builder or custom CSS
Onboard Brands: Invite your brands or choose brands from our catalog
Select Products: Curate products and collections manually or automate it
Embed products: Make your content, newsletters, social media shoppable
Get Paid: Get paid as soon as products are shipped by the brands
End-to-end automation: Brands sync, fulfillment, payouts, invoicing, taxes

When you’ve tried all that and it works, start thinking about building your own, custom-made marketplace project based on Spree Commerce. First, by decoupling the storefront and going headless with Vendo marketplace API, and later with your own backend, if you decide you really need it. Just lift and shift the storefront.

Nobody has to know what’s under the hood, right?