Francisco is my dog. He is also, without knowing it, one of the most reliable determinants of where I shop.

Every morning we walk together around the neighborhood in Lisbon. On the way back, I sometimes want to stop at the supermarket. The problem is obvious to anyone who has ever tried to leave a dog outside a shop on a busy street: there is nowhere safe to leave him, he gets anxious, and the whole thing becomes more trouble than it is worth. So I skip it and go home.

Except at two supermarkets near my house. Both installed hooks at the entrance where I can attach the lead. One of them went further: next to the hook, a small sticker that reads "P" (parking sign) as if there were a designated parking space for dogs. It is a minor thing. It cost practically nothing. And it is the reason I walk into that supermarket instead of the others. Francisco is not the customer. But Francisco is the reason I chose.

The decision-maker who does not appear in the buyer persona

Most marketing frameworks build their targeting around the person who pays. The buyer persona describes their income, their values, their pain points, their digital habits. What these frameworks rarely map is the network of dependencies that shapes when and where that person can actually act as a buyer.

A parent with young children does not choose a restaurant the same way a couple without children does. The deciding variable is often not the menu or the price but whether there is a play area, a high chair, or enough space to park a stroller without disrupting other tables. A person with a dog does not choose a supermarket the way someone without one does. The deciding variable is whether the dog can come, wait safely, or at least not be a problem.

Research from ScienceDirect demonstrates that pet ownership increases the frequency of shopping, the number of products purchased, and overall consumer spending, with emotional bonding between owner and pet as the primary driver of this behavior. Pet-friendly shopping environments increase in-store dwell time by 30%, leading to higher spending per visit, and 30% of Gen Z pet owners say they prioritize shopping at pet-friendly locations. (Working Solutions, 2025) VIDEN

The hook at the supermarket entrance is not a pet marketing strategy. The supermarket does not sell anything for dogs. But it understood that its customer sometimes arrives with a dog, and that if the dog is a problem, the customer leaves. Removing that friction cost almost nothing. Keeping a customer who would otherwise have walked past cost nothing at all.

Collateral marketing and the logic of indirect decision-making

What the supermarket did is what I would call collateral marketing: a small action directed not at the customer but at the condition that enables the customer to choose you. The beneficiary of the hook is Francisco. The commercial beneficiary is the supermarket. The two are connected by a relationship the supermarket did not create and does not manage, but chose to accommodate.

This logic appears in other contexts more often than marketing conversations acknowledge. Hotels that allow pets do not serve the pet. They serve the owner who would not stay without the pet. Restaurants with outdoor seating that tolerates dogs do not feed the dog. They retain the customer who would have gone elsewhere. Airlines with child-friendly policies do not fly for the child. They keep the parent who needs a seat belt extender and somewhere to store a pushchair without being made to feel like an inconvenience.

Becoming dog-friendly removes barriers to shopping for pet owners and encourages longer store visits, increasing the likelihood of purchases. Staff training, clear policies, and a safe store design are essential components, but the strategic logic is simple: when pets are welcomed, the owners who bring them choose to stay. (TimeWellScheduled, 2025)

The "P" sticker on the hook is worth dwelling on. It is not functional, the hook works without it. What the sticker does is signal awareness. It says: we thought about this. We considered the person who arrives with a dog and we did not just solve the problem, we acknowledged it with enough wit to make clear that someone here understood what the problem was. That acknowledgment is worth more than the hook itself, because it converts a practical solution into a brand gesture.

The gap between buyer personas and actual lives

Standard marketing advice on buyer personas produces portraits of people in ideal conditions. The persona shops on a Tuesday afternoon, has 45 minutes, and is making a decision based on price, quality, and brand values. What it rarely captures is the texture of how people actually move through their days, with dogs and children and elderly parents and schedules that do not bend easily.

Liu et al. (2024) show that the time and money spent on pets depends on the bond between pets and owners and their role in the family, with higher emotional attachment producing more significant market behaviors. (ResearchGate, 2024) The implication for brands is not to market to the pet. It is to understand that the pet is part of the customer's life in a way that routinely affects commercial decisions, and that brands which accommodate that reality gain preference without ever competing on price or product.

This is a form of friction reduction, but it is not the friction that most CRO frameworks focus on. It is not about checkout flow or page load speed. It is about whether the physical or social conditions of a customer's life make them capable of choosing you at all. A supermarket that does not have a hook for a dog lead is not failing on product or price. It is failing on the more basic question of whether I can get through its door.

What this costs and what it returns

The hook cost a few euros. The sticker cost less. The commercial return is a customer who passes other supermarkets on the way to that one, who does not consider alternatives when planning the morning walk, and who has developed a specific preference that has nothing to do with product range, pricing, or brand advertising.

This is the logic that most marketing budgets cannot replicate, because it operates below the threshold of campaign-level thinking. You cannot run a media campaign that makes someone feel the way a thoughtful hook at a door makes them feel. You can only install the hook.

The brands that understand collateral marketing are not necessarily the ones with the most sophisticated strategies. They are the ones that looked at how their customer actually lives, noticed Francisco waiting outside, and put something on the wall.

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Note: Yes, the photo is of Francisquinho.

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References

• Liu et al. / ResearchGate. (2024). "Pets make you spend more!" Impact of pet ownership on consumer purchase decisions. ResearchGate. Link
• ScienceDirect. (2024). Impact of pet ownership on consumers' purchase behavior. Journal of Business Research. Link
• Working Solutions. (2025). Customer Experience and Loyalty Strategies for the Pet Industry. Link
• TimeWellScheduled. (2025). Steps to Create a Dog-Friendly Retail Environment. Link

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