Emotional needs are an eternal topic for humanity. In the fast-paced urban environment that never stops, stable intimate relationships seem to have become a luxury in human society. Some say, “Pets are the only love that can be bought with money.” In the urban jungle made of steel and concrete, pets comfort the lonely souls of humans with their fluffy heads and soft bodies. However, when each little angel brings light and love into human lives, it is also plotting a great sorrow.
Most pets, such as cats and dogs, live for only a few decades. After their mission on earth is over, the pet funeral industry emerges. On one hand, driven by human emotional needs, grandly handling pets’ “afterlife” is a unique emotional ritual for humans; on the other hand, the harmless treatment of pet remains is increasingly affecting the health and safety of the human living environment. This has led to the industry becoming a new “hotspot” in the present. However, this emerging industry also faces many issues.The pet funeral industry is quietly thriving, with pet owners spending thousands of yuan for their beloved pets’ funerals. It is known that in our country, 3 million pets pass away each year, with nearly 10,000 pets leaving this world every day. As a result, specialized institutions that help pet owners deal with pet remains have emerged due to the increasing demand, making the pet funeral industry the endpoint of the pet economy chain.
As of April 4, 2023, there are 1,466 enterprises related to “pet funeral” in the country according to the People’s Trust Search. Less than a year old, Chestnut is a golden retriever. A few days ago, it unfortunately died of illness. Pet owner Mr. Li decided to hold a “pet funeral ceremony” for it. In the pet funeral “one-stop” service purchased by Mr. Li, it includes several main links such as receiving at the door, disinfection and cleaning of the pet remains, farewell and transcendence ceremony, pet cremation, and burial. The cost of pet cremation ranges from 600 yuan to 1,500 yuan, calculated according to the pet’s weight. In addition to the cremation service, pet funeral shops also offer many personalized items: such as burying the pet’s ashes in a potted plant to create a Tree of Life, which costs about 200 yuan; a pet paw print box costs 150 yuan; you can also bury the pet’s ashes in a tree, with a charge of 800 yuan for “one tree, one pet”; you can also invite a live band to perform at the farewell ceremony, costing 1,200 yuan, and so on. In the end, Mr. Li spent thousands of yuan on Chestnut’s funeral ceremony, and he believes it is “worth it.” He feels that the services provided by pet funerals allow Chestnut to leave more decently, and on the other hand, cremation is more environmentally friendly than simple burial.Currently, an increasing number of consumers are purchasing funeral services for their pets, just like Mr. Li, and the number of businesses offering such services is also on the rise. In addition to pet funeral services, the variety of pet-related commemorative products is growing as people’s demands diversify. By opening the Taobao app and searching for ‘pet memorials’, one can find a plethora of pet-derived products such as custom pet dolls made from pet fur, pet fur necklaces, custom necklaces and bracelets engraved with pet images, with prices ranging from tens to thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan.
Emotional consumption has become the main driving force for the development of the industry. Pet funeral services originated in Japan and first appeared in Beijing in 2002. After two decades of development, the market has grown from being ignored to a billion-yuan market. Nowadays, in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Qingdao, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou, the pet funeral industry is gradually emerging as a new industry. According to the ‘2017 China Pet Industry White Paper’, professional funeral services are gradually becoming a service consumption item for pet owners, with 53.9% of people willing to purchase professional funeral services such as cremation and burial plots after their pets pass away. According to the ‘2019 China Pet Industry White Paper’, in the huge pet consumption market, the penetration rate of pet funeral consumption is only 0. 5%, compared to a consumption penetration rate of over 70% for pet snacks and deworming medicine, indicating that the development of the former is still in its infancy. However, the ‘2020 China Pet Industry White Paper’ shows that in the urban pet (dog and cat) consumption market in China, the consumption penetration rate of pet funerals reached 3.6% in 2020. The ‘2022 China Pet Industry White Paper’ indicates that the consumption market size for urban pets (dogs and cats) in China was 270. 6 billion yuan in 2022, an increase of 8.7% compared to 2021. In 2022, the number of pet dogs and cats reached 116.55 million, also maintaining a growth trend. With hundreds of millions of pets, even with an 8% mortality rate, more than 8 million pets need to be ‘buried’ every year. It can be imagined that although pet funeral services in many cities in China are still in their infancy, the rapid upward trend in penetration rate and the rapid growth in the total size of the pet economy market indicate that the pet funeral industry will show rapid development in the coming years, with great potential. The cost of pet funerals is not small, so why are more and more people choosing it? The ‘2021 China Pet Consumption Trend White Paper’ shows that pets have completed the transformation from animals to family members and children in the role of emotional companionship in the family.In recent years, with the economic development and improvement of people’s living standards, after the basic satisfaction of material life, emotional needs have become an increasingly strong demand among the public. More and more people hope to gain emotional companionship by keeping pets. Many people regard pets as family members, and childless families even raise pets as their children. Empty nesters, both elderly and young, lacking companionship, also use pets as their emotional support.
As a result, people are willing to spend a lot of money on their pets. Furthermore, with the advancement of urbanization, it is difficult to find suitable land for the burial of pet remains in cities. The Animal Epidemic Prevention Law stipulates that animals should be treated harmlessly according to regulations after death, and no unit or individual is allowed to dispose of them arbitrarily. Therefore, the pet funeral industry has become a thriving and highly potential ‘big market’ in such an environment. Although the pet funeral industry is highly potential, it also faces many challenges. Mr. He, who founded the pet funeral brand ‘Chong Ling Tang’ in 2021, believes that customer acquisition and traffic attraction are significant difficulties in this industry. Since pet funerals are low-frequency, triggered demands, consumers only search for related services after their pets die, and many consumers are unaware of such services. The person in charge of ‘Mao Qiu Yi Guan’ also shares the same view. The pet funeral industry cannot do physical advertising, such as elevator, bus billboard, subway, and other advertising promotions, which face the risk of being taken down, and can only attract customers through some local service platforms or social platforms and recommendations from some old customers. In addition to the difficulty of customer acquisition, the capital market is also cautious about the pet funeral industry. According to the Red Star Capital Bureau, there have been more than 20 financing records in the pet market in recent years, but there is not much investment in the pet funeral industry. In June 2022, Hangzhou En Chong Tang announced the completion of a 15 million yuan A round of financing, invested by Hangzhou Hua Yuan Pet, which is also the first public investment in this field. Apart from the business difficulties, as an emerging industry, many rules of the pet funeral industry are still absent. The first issue is the business qualification. According to regulations, pet funeral service companies need to obtain the ‘Animal Epidemic Prevention Condition Qualification Certificate’ before handling the business license, and pass the environmental impact assessment to obtain the ‘Animal Harmless Treatment Qualification’. However, most institutions in the industry have not obtained the qualification and can only operate in the form of affiliation. Secondly, the high price is also an obvious problem in this industry. Pet funerals are expensive in the ‘funeral’ part, which is based on the ‘sense of ritual’ of human emotions.If there is no ‘funeral’ process, the price of pet cremation is not high. Red Star Capital Bureau has noticed that the Shanghai Animal Harmless Treatment Center, a professional institution dealing with animals and animal products in Shanghai, offers animal incineration pricing at only 30 yuan. On March 28, a staff member of the center said that the center only provides pet cremation services and there are no other fee-based items.
Is there any regulation for the high prices of services provided by those pet funeral merchants? According to the author’s research, currently there is no clear regulation on pet funerals issued. Their operations are often unregulated. In addition, non-compliant business scopes and non-compliant land sources for pet cemeteries are also common problems. As exposed by the program ‘First Time’ of CCTV, a company in Beijing has registered business scope of selling pet funeral supplies, but in actual operation, pet cemeteries are the main focus. Such a situation is widespread in the pet cemeteries visited by reporters. For the land where pets are buried, most of it is re-leased by using forest land or even cultivated land. Since operators are also uncertain about the future status of the land, the lease period is generally only 10 to 15 years. An operator of a pet cemetery told reporters that they haven’t thought about what to do after ten years. No one dares to guarantee it because this land is not originally intended for pet cemeteries. Even if it were, it could not be approved. According to China’s ‘Regulations on Funeral and Interment Management’, it is prohibited to use cultivated land and forest land as cemeteries, and there are also special requirements for site selection. CCTV reporters found by consulting the current ‘Classification Guide for Land Use and Sea Use’ that human funeral land belongs to a kind of special land. It is worth noting that currently there is no land arrangement specifically for pet funerals. The ‘2021 White Paper on China’s Pet Consumption Trends’ released by iResearch shows that China’s pet industry has entered a stable and mature stage of orderly growth, but the pet funeral industry is called a ‘gray industry that is growing wildly’ by practitioners. Regulating the pet funeral industry is the responsibility of regulatory authorities, merchants, and consumers. The People’s Data Research Institute believes that to bring this emerging industry with unlimited potential into a standardized track requires the joint efforts of relevant regulatory authorities, merchants, and consumers. Pet funeral services involve many departments such as market supervision, civil affairs, agriculture and forestry, and environmental protection. The supervision is still blank. Relevant departments should refine supervision, clarify responsibilities, and formulate reasonable plans to effectively supervise the industry. From the perspective of merchants, complying with relevant laws and regulations, taking the initiative to complete relevant procedures, setting reasonable prices, and maintaining a good ecological environment in the industry are also necessary links to promote the sustainable development of the industry. For consumers, in the face of the great grief of pet passing away, maintaining a rational and clear mind for relevant consumption, improving awareness of discrimination, and going to qualified institutions for pet funeral matters can also avoid being taken advantage of by illegal elements and protect their own rights and interests.There is still a long way to go in maintaining the orderly development of the pet funeral industry.
Defining rational standards for emotional consumption and avoiding excessive exploitation of people’s emotional needs is always an important issue in this industry.