Trone Research and Consulting

Veterinarians discuss medications and health-related services with clients every day, but they’re not always as confident about recommending pet foods, treats and supplements, especially if they don’t carry the product in-clinic. In fact, many veterinarians are actually worried that endorsing a product they don’t carry will hurt their bottom line or take valuable visit time that should be used to discuss something more important.

We wanted to better understand the difference between how the subscribers of the biggest internet providers think compared to subscribers of the rest, including those who subscribe to smaller, regional internet providers.

Through a national internet survey, we asked home internet subscribers how frequently they used their subscription for common daily activities such as emailing, surfing, shopping and even working from home. Four activities stood out—streaming videos, streaming music, listening to podcasts and online gaming. These, in conjunction with perceived home internet download speeds and service tier, yielded three distinct streaming segments.

Here’s yet another article about marketing to Millennials. You already know they use social media. An article from the Wall Street Journal shows that Millennials spend almost 8 hours a day using social media. What you may not know is that one of the biggest mistakes in marketing is lumping Millennials into one big category. According to research by Curalate, there are 14 distinct Millennial personas, and at Trone Research + Consulting, we know how to create content to get the attention of each one of them. There’s a Millennial called “The Boss Babe.” She probably has a dog. So does “the Quarter-Life Crisis,” because pets make everything better.

Our survey of nearly a thousand US home internet customers revealed that over 62% of both mid- and fiber-tier respondents are most influenced by an internet provider’s reputation when considering switching their service.

Your internet customers aren’t as loyal as you’d think. In fact, according to our March survey of nearly a thousand US home-internet customers, 22% of mid-tier and fiber-tier respondents would seriously consider switching providers if they experienced three to five buffering or lagging issues in a span of one week.

Just under 80% of both mid- and fiber-tier respondents believe that their home internet service is a “basic amenity,” viewed on par with running water or electricity. From smart televisions to smart thermostats, the number of household electronics that require an internet connection is growing. Marketing fiber as a “convenience” could be deterring customers who are on the fence about upgrading.

Welcome Pet Brand Marketers to Millennial Training 101. At Trone Research + Consulting we understand that millennials can be a challenging breed of shoppers to reach. We’ve put together a series of training videos to help your brand answer common questions, including: How do you get a millennial to come when they’re called? How do you make a millennial do tricks? And how do you keep a millennial from running away?

We constantly rely on data to point our clients in the right direction when shaping their brands. The quality of the solutions we deliver can only be as good as the data our research provides. Recently, we learned an important lesson in how sample size can affect both research results and the conclusions we draw from it.


Doug Barton, President & CEO

Doug Barton

President & CEO

Doug is a career research, analytics and brand marketing executive with more than 35 years of experience working with Top 50 market research firms, Fortune 500 companies and marketing firms on client and supplier side.

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He is a leader and advisor with a proven track record of solving business challenges for start-ups as well as small to large businesses across the world. Doug’s industry experience spans across hospitality, telecom, CPG, financial services, insurance, textile and apparel, turf and ornamental, animal health and retail.

Kimberly Ness

Kimberly Ness

SVP, Insights & Marketing

With 25+ years of experience across research, branding and marketing, Kimberly has the unique ability to transform complicated data into a simple strategic plan that achieves results.

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She has led marketing efforts for global and national brands and has a specialty in animal health, working with brands like Zoetis, Boeringer Ingelheim and Mars Petcare. She is known as an industry thought leader and has been a featured speaker at Global Pet Expo, AAHA, CBI, Brakke Consulting and Fetch, a dvm360 conference.

Tom Minsel

Tom Minsel

PhD, Head of Research & Data Science

Tom is our PhD Statistician and master data miner with 25+ years in direct marketing, customer targeting, modeling and research design.

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His areas of expertise include statistics, applied and theoretical measurement, psychological research, survey research, summative and formative evaluation, SAS, sampling, trend analysis and generally all things analytics. Tom oversees more than 65 comprehensive studies each year to help clients better understand their customers.