Pet IQ Case Study
The pet joint health category has become one of the most competitive and confusing spaces in pet wellness. Brands increasingly compete not just on ingredient lists, but on perceived scientific credibility, dosing strength, clinical language, and “premium” signaling. PetIQ’s portfolio was well established in mass retail, but leadership faced a critical strategic question: How does VetIQ truly compare — formulation-for-formulation — against leading competitors once dosage, evidence, and delivery format are normalized?
Traditional competitive reviews relied on surface-level ingredient comparisons, which failed to answer deeper questions such as:
Are competitors actually dosing ingredients meaningfully or just listing them?
Where is VetIQ at parity, advantage, or genuine gap?
Which perceived “premium” products are driven more by storytelling than science?
What actions should follow — reformulate, repackage, or restory?
Answering these questions manually across dozens of SKUs, weight tiers, and ingredient systems would have required months of cross-functional effort.
Using the platform, PetIQ gained a single, decision-ready view of the category that went far beyond traditional benchmarking.
Key analytical outputs included:
Standardized daily dosing tables across all major competitors
Normalized reference dose ranges derived from category usage
Clear Advantage / Parity / Gap tagging at the ingredient and SKU level
Evidence mapping, distinguishing:
Independent veterinary literature
Brand-specific clinical programs (e.g., Rx-adjacent players)
Inactive system insights, revealing how “premium perception” is often driven by filler complexity rather than superior actives
This allowed PetIQ to objectively assess where VetIQ’s formulations were already strong, and where perception, not efficacy, was the real challenge.
Results
About PetIQ
Strategic Impact
The platform transformed a complex competitive landscape into clear strategic direction. PetIQ used the platform’s outputs to directly inform:
2026–2027 innovation planning
Packaging and PDP storytelling priorities
Claim discipline and dose transparency strategy
Investment decisions around reformulation vs restorying
The analysis reinforced a key insight:
VetIQ’s opportunity is not to add more ingredients — it’s to more clearly own the science and dosing it already delivers.