The market at a glance

• Consistent funnel leader: Pedigree holds the top position across all primary metrics throughout the four months, reaching 77% aided awareness, 38% consideration, 37% past-six-month (P6M) purchase, and 20% preferred brand status by April 2026.
• Consideration surge: Royal Canin’s consideration climbed from 28% in December 2025 to a four-wave high of 34% in April 2026, the largest sustained upward move of any brand in the tracker, positioning it as the second-highest brand on consideration despite ranking fourth on aided awareness in April.
• Purchase leader: Pedigree records the highest P6M purchase rate in the tracker at 37% in April 2026, a notable recovery from a dip to 27% in February 2026 and extends its lead over the closest challenger Supercoat (22%) by 15 percentage points.
• Conversion standout: Nature’s Gift achieves the strongest awareness-to-purchase conversion among mid-tier brands, translating 41% aided awareness into 17% P6M purchase in April 2026, a 40% conversion rate that outpaces Advance (40% awareness, 8% P6M purchase) and Hill’s (42% awareness, 11% P6M purchase).

Initial findings from the first four months of 2026

The Australian packaged dog food landscape is led emphatically by Pedigree, which maintained the highest market presence across all tracking metrics throughout the four months. By April 2026, Pedigree recorded 77% aided awareness, 38% consideration, 37% P6M purchase, and 20% preferred brand status. Its nearest challengers vary by metric: Supercoat (58% awareness, 28% consideration, 22% P6M purchase, 11% preferred) and Royal Canin (56% awareness, 34% consideration, 21% P6M purchase, 14% preferred) compete across the funnel, while Lucky Dog (58% awareness) matches Supercoat on raw reach but lags on lower-funnel conversion with just 5% preferred brand status.

Pedigree’s P6M purchase figure was the most volatile metric of the four months. It opened at 31% in December 2025, dipped sharply to 27% in February, recovered to 36% in March, then reached 37% in April. The February dip coincided with a consideration decline from 37% to 33%, suggesting a temporary softening that reversed strongly across March (39%) and April (38%). No structural loss of position is apparent; Pedigree’s preferred brand share remained stable at 17–21% across all four waves.

Royal Canin is the most notable mover on consideration. Starting at 28% in December 2025, it reached 33% in February before settling at 30% in March and climbing to a four-wave high of 34% in April. This upward trajectory on consideration was not matched on awareness, which declined from 62% in February to 56% in April, suggesting the brand is becoming more efficiently targeted rather than broadly reaching. Royal Canin’s preferred brand share of 14% in April is the second highest in the category, only behind Pedigree’s 20%.

Beyond total scale, the tracker reveals Nature’s Gift as the strongest mid-tier converter on the awareness-to-purchase step. With 41% awareness in April 2026, the brand achieves 17% P6M purchase, a conversion rate of roughly 40% from aware to buyer. This clearly outpaces peers at similar awareness levels: Advance (40% awareness) converts just 8% to P6M purchase, and Hill’s (42% awareness) converts 11%. Nature’s Gift’s purchase efficiency suggests strong category relevance and repeat-buying behaviour among those who know the brand, consistent with its positioning as a wet-format dog food attracting committed purchasers.

“Our first four months of continuous tracking in the packaged dog food category reveal a market led by Pedigree with consistency, but also one with genuine competitive dynamism beneath the surface,” says Yutian Shen, Market Researcher of Conjointly. “Royal Canin’s sustained consideration growth despite falling awareness, and Nature’s Gift’s conversion efficiency despite mid-tier reach, are exactly the kinds of signals that brand tracking is designed to surface. Raw awareness rankings alone would have missed both.”

The findings are based on a syndicated study of 1,778 Australian adults who qualified as buyers of packaged dog food in the past six months, drawn from Conjointly’s broader panel of 5,425 respondents. Data was collected across four waves in December 2025 (440), February (400), March (453), and April 2026 (485). Participants were recruited via Conjointly’s panel network and compensated for their time, with the sample weighted to national demographics to ensure findings are market-representative.

Explore the Australian packaged dog food data at https://brandtracker.conjointly.com/australia/dog-food/.

About Brand Tracker by Conjointly

Brand Tracker delivers automated brand performance reporting with rigorous, market-representative insights. Australian businesses across industries can now access statistically weighted brand funnel data, including awareness, consideration, purchase intent and preference.

“We built Brand Tracker because traditional brand tracking locked businesses into expensive, inflexible contracts and delivered snapshots long after market conditions shifted,” said Nik Samoylov, Founder of Conjointly. “Brand Tracker gives Australian businesses the easy-to-use and easy-to-digest analytics they need to know their brand positioning, brand awareness and more, without requiring a six-figure commitment.”

Brand Tracker currently offers Australian businesses free access to detailed public brand data across six industries. For monitoring of your own brand with advanced analytics and real-time dashboards, Priority Access starts from $6,000 per year. Custom tracking solutions are also available for businesses with specific needs.

About Conjointly

Conjointly started as a simple online tool for conjoint analysis in 2016 and has since evolved into an industry-leading market research platform. Conjointly holds ISO 20252:2019 (Sampling), ISO 27001:2022, ISO 27701:2019, and SOC 2 Type II certifications, and is a member of the Insights Association and the British Healthcare Business Intelligence Association.

Conjointly’s tools address the most common pricing and product research problems and are supplemented with expert support and guidance from experienced researchers. With thousands of projects performed on the platform, Conjointly is the go-to research place for hundreds of clients.