To bid a dignified farewell to the 'furry child', the pet funeral industry has turned emotions into business. On August 12th, a Beijing Business Daily reporter found that pet funeral services are gradually becoming popular on local life platforms and social media. Businesses not only provide basic cremation and burial services, but also cover the entire process. At present, the cost of a pet funeral on the market is over a thousand yuan, with some even exceeding 8000 yuan. However, pet funeral services are also divided into off-season and peak season, with relatively better business in summer and winter. It is worth noting that the pet funeral industry is facing problems such as unstable customer acquisition and incomplete service qualifications of some merchants, which hide gray areas in the cremation and burial processes. The pet funeral industry urgently needs further standardization in order to achieve healthy and sustainable development. The highest over 8000 yuan pet funeral has spawned diversified services. A reporter from Beijing Business Daily visited offline pet funeral stores and found that with the gradual expansion of the pet market, a full process service has emerged around the theme of pet funeral, including pick-up and drop off, grooming, farewell ceremony, cremation, ashes storage, burial, and souvenir making. Prices vary depending on the selection of service content and the complexity of the ceremony. At multiple pet funeral stores, their services include animals such as cats, dogs, rabbits, and chinchillas, and they have created packages with varying fees based on consumer needs. Taking a high selling store on a local lifestyle platform as an example, the store offers three levels of full process funeral services, with the highest price exceeding 8000 yuan, including 17 items. Compared with the two packages of over 1000 yuan and over 3600 yuan, the farewell room has a longer usage time of up to 3 hours and is equipped with services such as camera and video production. As a basic consumer demand, cremation has also established different pricing systems for single furnace cremation and collective cremation. At a store in Haidian District, the price for single cremation of pets weighing less than 20 pounds is 781 yuan, while the price for collective cremation of multiple pets is 291 yuan. The latter cannot provide feedback on photos and videos and does not retain ashes. If consumers want to preserve their ashes or make them into souvenirs, they need to choose the more expensive single furnace cremation service. In addition to diverse choices, personalized and customized services have also become the driving force of the pet funeral industry. A Beijing Business Daily reporter visited a pet funeral store located in Wangjing and found that the price of a farewell ceremony ranges from 3200 to 5000 yuan depending on the size of the pet. On top of basic services, the store will arrange a farewell ceremony based on the color of the pet's fur, their interests and hobbies during their lifetime, and determine the segment and duration of the farewell ceremony according to the needs of consumers. At the same time, pet funeral services have gradually become popular on the consumer side. On social media platforms, many consumers have shared the content and personal feelings of holding farewell ceremonies for their pets. A consumer who owns a cat said, 'The first thing to solve after a pet passes away is the disposal of the body. Finding a professional team to cremate it will be more reassuring, and holding a farewell ceremony can also make it easier for oneself to accept the pet's departure.'. The main service providers for pet funerals during the peak seasons of winter and summer are pets. In fact, for businesses, it is more important to provide consumers with the emotional value they need. Therefore, in the promotion of most pet funeral businesses, the symbolism of beauty and warmth is always prominent. For example, many brand names use words such as "saint", "fate", and "companion" to reflect the store's care for pets and gain the trust of consumers. However, behind the "warmth" business, there is ultimately a game between profit and cost. Li Lixin, the person in charge of it, told Beijing Business Daily reporters that the average customer price of the store is about 3000 yuan, but pet funerals are also divided into off-season and peak season, making it difficult to ensure stable orders. She said that the climate characteristics in winter are more likely to cause cardiovascular diseases, cardiac arrest, etc. in pets, while in summer, it is because of the high ground temperature that pets are prone to discomfort when they approach the ground. How to attract customers is a challenge that pet funeral businesses need to overcome. An industry insider in the pet funeral industry told Beijing Business Daily that it is difficult for businesses to promote pet funerals to their parents. On the one hand, this is not pleasing, and many consumers find it difficult to accept the fact that their pets will leave; On the other hand, pet deaths are often sudden, and this service has almost no repurchase rate. However, driven by merchant promotion and social media content, consumers' acceptance of pet funerals continues to increase. Li Lixin told Beijing Business Daily reporters that when the store first opened, it only received one order in the first month, but now it can reach up to 20 orders per month, and many customers have called in advance for consultation. Consumers' attitudes are gradually changing and they are willing to plan ahead for elderly or sick pets. While expanding their customer base, pet funeral businesses also need to pay more attention to humanistic care. Renowned strategic positioning expert and founder of Fujian Huace brand positioning consulting, Zhan Junhao, believes that as pets gradually become important members of many families, people are seeking more humane and respectful ways to handle their deaths. When providing such services, businesses should pay more attention to humanistic care and emotional connection, rather than simply pursuing economic benefits. At the same time, they should maintain integrity in their operations and avoid using people's emotional weaknesses for improper marketing. The fee standards need to be standardized. With the expansion of pet ownership, the pet consumption market has been more finely divided, and segmented fields and brands such as pet cake, pet foster care, and pet funeral have emerged, attracting investors and entrepreneurs to enter the market. Industry reports show that the size of China's pet funeral service market has grown from 701 million yuan in 2018 to 1.825 billion yuan in 2023, more than doubling in five years. Another survey shows that in terms of funeral preferences, 60.4% of pet owners prefer to bid farewell to the body, and 25% choose to make souvenirs. More and more consumers hope that their pets can be properly placed or left with dignity after they pass away. It is worth noting that the pet funeral industry is still in a relatively "extensive" stage, and there are no reliable standards for service quality, fee standards, etc. There are also many gray areas in pet euthanasia, cremation, burial, and other aspects. According to consumer feedback, some businesses have problems with their grooming and tidying services being mere formalities and perfunctory handling. During the cremation process, there have even been cases of indiscriminately discarding pet remains and deceiving consumers with false videos. In the view of Hong Tao, Vice Chairman of the Chinese Society of Consumer Economics and Director of the Institute of Business Economics at Beijing Technology and Business University, the entry threshold for the pet funeral service industry is relatively low, and there are many franchise brands in the market that provide technical and operational guidance for those who want to enter the industry, making it possible to open a pet funeral shop. However, in the specific operations of merchants, non-standard behaviors arising from interests or technical reasons have led to market chaos. At present, there are no clear policies and regulations in the market to regulate the pet funeral industry. Hong Tao believes that relevant departments should pay full attention to the increasing demand for pet funeral services, improve relevant laws and regulations, formulate industry standards, implement regulatory responsibilities, and provide guarantees for the healthy development of the pet funeral industry; It can also strengthen the publicity of harmless treatment, ecological burial, Internet cemetery and other new pet funeral forms for consumers. (New Society)