Kevin Dona

Kevin Dona is Executive Vice President at TRC Insights and one of the most experienced new product development researchers in the market research industry. He brings more than 30 years of specialized expertise in innovation research, new product concept testing and forecasting, segmentation, and pricing — built across three of the most analytically demanding organizations in the field: ACNielsen BASES, Ipsos-Vantis, and Ipsos North America.

Kevin began his career with a foundation in engineering (B.S., Penn State University) before completing his MBA at the University of Pittsburgh’s Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business — a background that gives him the discipline of a systems thinker and the business orientation of a strategist. His research approach is governed by a single question: does this insight translate into better in-market outcomes?

At ACNielsen BASES, Kevin spent nearly a decade as Vice President of Client Service, working at one of the world’s most respected new product forecasting and testing organizations. He then moved to Ipsos-Vantis, where he held roles including Head of U.S. Operations, Director of U.S. Marketing Sciences, and Product Division Sector Head, consulting Fortune 500 companies on hundreds of new product launches across technology, telecom, alcohol, beauty care, personal care, and consumer packaged goods. He subsequently led a team of 20 professionals in the Ipsos North America Marketing division before joining TRC Insights in 2016.

Kevin is a published author in Quirk’s Marketing Research Review, where his April 2009 article, “Add Some Strategy to Your Concept Evaluation Process,” introduced a concept archetypes framework for interpreting new product evaluation results beyond the high-low scoring approach that had become standard industry practice. At Ipsos-Vantis he also developed SCALE™, a proprietary scorecarding approach for concept evaluation.

His work at TRC has reached the Harvard Business Review, where a multi-country study he led for PayPal — surveying thousands of consumers across North America, Europe, and Australia on “Buy Now, Pay Later” adoption and behavior — was featured as a case example that directly shaped PayPal’s global expansion strategy for the product.

Kevin brings to every engagement a career-long focus on the gap between what consumers say in research and what drives actual market success. Over his career he has worked on thousands of new product launches and examined consumer response to tens of thousands more — in categories from food and beverage to OTC healthcare, medical devices, and financial technology.

Education: M.B.A., University of Pittsburgh (Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business); B.S., Penn State University

Contact Kevin via email or call him directly at 215.641.2232

Kevin’s LinkedIn profile