The 3 Types of Puppy Buyers

Today I want to talk about the types of people who buy our puppies: our customers.  As in any serious enterprise, it’s really important to understand your customers if you want to take control of your breeding business.

…Who are they?

…What are they like?

…What sort of owners do they make?

…Where do they hang out?

…What sort of prices are they likely to pay and why should you care?

These are some of the things we’re going to talk about today.

The Three Kinds of Puppy Buyers

I see three kinds of puppy buyers out there.

1. The Whim Puppy Buyers

The first type of puppy buyer is buying on a whim. These guys hang out on sites like Craigslist and Gumtree. You know, those general classified sites where typically the puppies are cheaper than they are elsewhere, and they happen across a cute puppy and then they get excited and go, “Wow, that’s just down the road and it’s only $700. How about we get a new puppy? What do you reckon, guys? Let’s go.”

Right? So it’s basically buying puppy on a whim. I call them the whim buyers.

They are attracted to a low price puppy available right now.

They haven’t put very much thought into it.  And frankly, they make the less committed owner because they haven’t put much money or energy into it either. Often they haven’t even bothered preparing. They’re just winging it.

It’s easy come, easy go. They don’t want to pay much for the puppy. The whim buyer is attracted to a cheap price, available right now and buy on a whim.

So if you’re selling in the US, for example, for under $1,000 a puppy, then you’re going to mainly be attracting the whim buyer.

If you are in that market, then you are probably going to be quite worried about the quality of the homes.  Accordingly you might have a process that you put people through [quite rightly] to try to figure out whether or not they’re actually going to make good owners for your puppies.

2. The Emotional Puppy Buyers

Now the next kind of buyer that I see out there, I call them the emotional buyers.  These guys do a lot more preparation and looking around than the whim buyers before they buy a pup.  And typically they go looking on the dedicated puppy sites.

Once they’ve actually decided that they want a puppy they tend to want it now. They’re often quite under-informed, meaning fairly ignorant of some of the issues that can go with getting a puppy in the longer term.

The emotional buyers don’t realize that there’s a huge difference from one breeder to another. They just don’t realize that and they think a puppy is a puppy, right? But they do have some conditions and they have thought about it a bit.

For example, they know they don’t want to buy from a puppy mill.  And they don’t want to get scammed.  So they go on puppy sites and look for breeders who have at least had their ID verified.

Emotional buyers [in the USA] are willing to pay between $1,000 and $2,000 for a puppy, but they want it now. They’re buying emotionally. They don’t want to wait and they can’t tell the difference from one breeder to another on those directories anyway.  So they will look for a puppy that’s available now and they are willing to pay a little bit more just to make sure that it does come from a reputable source, at least, not a puppy mill, right?

They usually make pretty good owners and you usually don’t have to worry too much about the quality of home that your puppy is going to end up with these buyers.

The main issues with the emotional buyer is that because they don’t put a lot of research into their decision, they might, for example, be getting a breed that’s not suitable for them because they just “liked the look of it”, for example. They might think “she’ll be right”, and over-estimate their ability to deal with a poorly chosen dog.   So as breeders we need to help them to make sure that they are making the right decision in that case, so that we can sleep well at night!

3. The Discerning Puppy Buyers

Now my favorite kind of buyer are people that I call the discerning buyer. What sets these guys apart is that they put a lot of research into the decision. They see getting a puppy as a massive decision [as everyone should] because they know they’re going to live with it for the next 10 to 15 years.

Because they do their research the discerning buyer realizes that there can be a big difference between the quality of puppy from one breeder to another.

While they’re doing their research they hang out on the Google search bar. They want to make sure that they’ve covered all their bases, that they can be assured their puppy’s healthy, that it’s the right choice for them, right breed for them, so they’re very discerning people.

Discerning buyers are willing to wait for the right puppy because they’re not in a mad rush. It’s not a whim. It’s not an emotional decision, not like the whim buyer and the emotional buyer.

And they are prepared to pay more for what they consider to be value that the breeder has added to the puppy, because what we do as breeders makes a huge difference to how successful our puppies end up in their careers as canine companions, and these buyers know that.

Discerning buyers are happy to pay between $2,000 and $4,000 for run of the mill average breeds [and a lot more for more expensive breeds].

They’re the ones you should be aiming for. Not only do they pay you well for being a great breeder.  But they’re also the owners you don’t have to lose sleep at night over, worrying about the quality of the home that your puppies are going into.

So next week I’ll be talking about how to understand the discerning buyers and how to attract them onto your wait lists for your puppies, so tune in for that.