With millennials quickly becoming a key consumer group in the tech market, new categories such as pet tech and food tech are gaining, reflecting how millennials value nutrition and tech-enabled products. Consumers now are eager for new tech that promises ease, convenience and health.

Petrics CEO and President Edward Hall highlighted on the CES Tech Talk podcast how the millennial market is influencing the advancement of technologies and companies’ approach to product marketing.

“[Millennials] are tech savvy, and they are used to tracking health metrics,” he said. “Smartwatches are now growing so much where I rarely ever see a regular watch anymore.”

Smart tech has quickly become a standard for the millennial set. In the pet tech industry, older generations raised pets without tech and specialized organic pet foods, relying on vet recommendations or common knowledge. Millennial pet owners, in contrast, are interested in any tech — like Petrics’ products — that promise a better life for their pet.

This has shifted the marketing focus in pet tech to be less about the type of pet someone has and more about consumer attitudes and what is trendy. Instead of having the basics for a dog, for example, it’s now about enhancing a dog’s life with innovative products that catch the pet owner’s eye.

What These Market Changes Mean for Business

As companies learn more about the younger generation of consumers, Hall expects the current retailer siloes to change dramatically. Using pet tech as an example, instead of different categories of products — safety products on one side of a store, activity trackers on another, and feeders and entertainment on a third — Hall anticipates a recategorization under an umbrella “connected pet” that would feature all these products to fit the way millennial consumers are looking to buy.

“There’s [currently] a break there. And once that starts to get figured out, I think we’re really going to see this industry grow,” he said.

Marketing and promotion strategies are already being rehauled to meet the attitudes of the younger buyers.

And for Pet Tech in Particular?

With the prominent status of millennials in pet owners purchasing, pet tech is becoming more commonplace, which is good news for Petrics.

From interactive toys and playdate software to Petrics’ own pet activity tracker, nutrition app and smart pet bed, the breadth of innovative products in the category is only expanding.

“Pet tech and the state of pet tech — it’s growing for sure,” Hall said.

Hear Edward Hall introduce Petrics and speak about the rise of pet tech with Basepaws founder Anna Skaya.