141 applicants

Company

Original Job Post

UNFI · 2 days ago

Category Management & Customer Insights Manager

Providence, RI

Full-time

Remote

Mid, Senior Level

5+ years exp

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Responsibilities

Establish and lead the implementation of category learnings, insight, business strategies, and thought leadership to accelerate Private Brands' growth in sales, units, penetration, and space.

Identify, share, and align on specific category opportunities (including, but not limited to penetration, distribution, assortment, execution, and price). Deliver action steps for retail-specific implementation that will drive unit and dollar share growth, incremental return on inventory invested, and better performance.

Provide insight on promotion timing, pricing, and tactics to improve category performance vs National Brands and Private Brands. Identify what is working in a category and what is not and provide recommendations on how to improve performance. Able to do assortment analysis to recommend optimal assortment.

Identify new approaches for growing the category, driving initiatives to increase category awareness and space, and creating processes to better manage the performance of the category over the long term.

Evaluate Category performance across all channels to inform decision-making.

Actively support line reviews Customer Category reviews, and “Top to Top” meetings.

Partner with sales in crafting analysis, and messaging for key strategic topics. Develop insights based on the Brand Health & Household panel (Consumer Facts).

Develop integrated selling presentation utilizing syndicated data, category insights, and supporting consumer trends with recommendations to grow categories and UNFI Brands.

Maintain knowledge of promotional and pricing fundamentals and competitive brands to provide high-level insight into promotional effectiveness to Brands+ and customer teams. Recommend to both Merchandising and Professional Services Price Management teams optimal pricing strategies/opportunities for key categories to drive relevance and competitiveness in the market.

Support the development of the overall UNFI Brands+ portfolio strategy identifying brand growth opportunities and helping influence brand strategies and innovation plans.

Serve as category expert for Brand Marketing, PBM, Merchandising + Category Management, and Sales teams. Provide strategies to maximize category growth and Brands+ market share.

Design planograms for various categories based on merchandising strategies, seasonal promotions, and sales goals.

Analyze store layout and space constraints to ensure efficient use of space while maintaining a visually appealing and shopper-friendly environment.

Determine the optimal placement of products on shelves, endcaps, displays, and other fixtures to attract customer attention and drive sales.

Synthesize category strategies to equip the sales team with a robust selling story supporting JBP, category growth, and new item meetings.

Run, distribute, and continuously improve quad weekly tracking reports utilizing NielsenIQ syndicated data. We use all food and beverage categories for the Total US, across all available grocery customers, and for Walmart and Target.

Develop mastery of proprietary Nielsen tools and metrics, which will be used to help solve the most pressing category and business questions.

Ensure data integrity and structure for how UNFI utilizes NielsenIQ’s syndicated databases. This will include creating and maintaining extensive custom totals for categories, segments, brands, sizes, etc.

Develop insights based on ad hoc analyses utilizing Nielsen’s syndicated data. These will include, but are not limited to, the following: category segmentations and category sales measurement.

Provide insights based on household panel (NielsenIQ Consumer Facts) data for marketing.

Partner with our Nielsen and SPINS teams. This will include but is not limited to, collaborating with their resources to improve our category management tools.

Contribute to annual forecasting based on sales trends and market input.

Where appropriate, partner with the internal market research team to uncover consumer insights and help answer customer department/category questions.

Perform other relevant job duties as required

Qualification

Find out how your skills align with this job's requirements. If anything seems off, you can easily click on the tags to select or unselect skills to reflect your actual expertise.

Category managementCPG industrySyndicated data toolsPricingPromotion toolsData analysisMS ExcelMS PowerPointFinancial analysisManaging large data setsProcess improvementsProject managementProblem-solvingCuriosityTeam playerHighly motivatedInterpersonal skillsAttention to detailCategory Management CertificationNielsen IQSpectraNumeratorRakutenExcel

Required

Bachelor’s degree in marketing or business preferred or equivalent related experience and training

A minimum of 5+ years of experience in category management required, significant experience in the CPG industry preferred

Must possess an in-depth knowledge of syndicated data tools (Circana (IRI), Nielsen), pricing and promotion tools

Proven ability to collect, organize, analyze, and interpret data to draw meaningful conclusions and communicate recommendations in line with category and business objectives is required

Curious mindset and passion for growing the category and UNFI Brands+ business. Must be comfortable and quick in MS Excel and PowerPoint

Excellent oral, written communication and excellent interpersonal skills

Strong quantitative analysis and proficiency with Excel & PowerPoint

Experience with financial analysis

Experience managing large data sets and utilizing to drive performance and process improvements

Team player

Highly motivated / self-starter

Ability to work in a fast-paced environment and manage various projects at the same time

Meticulous attention to detail

Willingness and ability to travel a few times throughout the year