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The Need for “It Economy” the raising awareness of “safe petting”, the pet vaccines
and clinical need increase, indirectly bringing the special
As of June 2020, the global pet market valuation had sur- needs such as pet training and pet boarding.
passed USD 190 billion with an expected annual growth of 5 However, the increasing pet knowledge may also stop
percent by 2025, according to the trend research team of Robe- consumers becoming a pet owner. Despite the increasing
co, an international asset manager. The key engine is the increase trend of pet ownership, regional differences remain. Ac-
of pet ownership and the so-called “pet humanization”. cording to the 15th market survey of American Pet Products
“Pet humanization” is the millennial trend to take the Association (APPA) in 2016, there were 8.46 million house-
pet as a family member. Chewy, a US-based pet e-commerce holds having pets, accounting for 68 percent of the total
website founded in 2011, rode on this trend to emerge. Pets, 12,458,700 households. Among them, dog owners and cat
a similar platform founded in 1998 and listed in February, owners made up 48 percent and 38 percent, with a total
2020, were acquired by Petsmart, the largest local pet service 7,275,600 households. Compared to America, there were
company, after 9 months of short operation. In April 2017, only 61.2 million dog or cat owners in China in 2019, with
it realized the highest acquisition price of USD 3.35 billion an increase of 8.4 percent over the previous year. This gap
and became the second largest online pet platform in Amer- between western world and Asia has widened. For those
ica, only after Amazon. Asian families living in central cities with smaller housing
When pets are considered as a part of the family, the space per capita, a new family member may bring some
consumption centered around them becomes diversified anxiety, making them hesitant to take a pet home.
with higher quality. Pets start to have their own life stan- However, the need for emotional comfort still remains
dard. For example, their food are exquisitely categorized and communication barriers including social phobia and
as dry food, wet food, snacks and nutrients. Along with workplace vexation lead to a desire for tender emotional
feedback. The matured market economy has seized this
opportunity, resulting in a boom of animal cafes.

Under the Name of “Loving Pets”

In 1998, a “Kitty Garden” cafe opened in Taiwan,
becoming viral due to the mass reports of travel websites
and NHK. Cat cafes then became a trend and reached
Japan, Mainland China, South Korea, Thailand and Malay-
sia. The “furry” fashion even expanded to Europe and
North America.
Based on this phenomenon, Lin Ruihua from Nation-
al Dong Hwa University and Chi Hengchang from Nation-
al Changhua University of Education co-published “The
Progress and Space Creation of Cat Cafes in Taiwan” in
December 2018 edition of Journal of Geographical Sci-
ence. The study concluded the basic characteristics of cat
cafes as follows: more than 2 cats in the dining space;
freedom of cats to stay in the whole cafe or certain plac-
es; customers more willing to pay for the experience of
“having fun with cats” instead of food.
In the 22-year operation of Kitty Garden, Asia has
witnessed dining services with animal experiences of
doggies, sheep, hedgehogs and racoons. The characteris-
tics mentioned above can also be applied to these cafes.
Deviation from original purpose In an interview, Lin
and Chi emphasized that Kitty Garden itself, the first one
of its kind, was a cat owner. At the initial stage of cat
cafes, most of them aimed to help stray cats, maintaining
operation with revenue to find suitable adopters.

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