Brands/competition

These was a time when there were a few manufacturers of dog food. it was a simpler time to make the basic food for dogs. To captivate the market and to gain a greater market share, the companies needed to develop an advertising campaign to educe the public to buy their brand of dog food, whether it be through fancy packaging and lots and lots of advertising emphasizing the brand name and through it all we eventually associated a certain brand with quality.
Our parents may have heard of what they put into dog food but at the time, I might surmise that they said, "not in our dog food brand." There probably wasn't alot of information out there in terms of nutrition, proper labeling, it was only dog food. We trusted that these pet food manufacturers were looking into our interest of our doggies.
​So, years, decades and generations continued to use what we felt was good food for our dogs
Personally, to this day, I've always trusted a certain doggie treat because I've always believed it was good for my doggie. They were very receptive and always looking forward to one. BUT, I never thought about how nutritious it is to my Rocky.
As with any industry that grows, it was important for these companies to be one step ahead of the game from a competition standpoint. Now there were other players competing with the big guys. The  big guys had to diversify their product line and with their popular brands how can they make it better and in so doing, more demand therefore harder to maintain competition. The best was to keep competition at bay is to keep prices cheap. But how cheap is cheap. Are there alternatives to the big pet food manufacturers to keep pirces down? You bet and at what cost, well to our doggies.
You see, we are the most wasteful country in the world when it comes to food. Rather than throw it away,, use it for dog food. But these companies have alot of monies to cover each and every decision, using the right chemicals to enhance flavor to law firms hired to encourage the rights of the companies to lobbying groups acting in behalf of these companies .
To avoid special regulations, these companies source their work to other countries that their business practices aren't exactly ethical, in an effort to keep prices down!.
​There's so much emphasis on market share and who the competition is, that any drop, will spur innovative ideas to capture the share back at any cost at of course our dogs health.