Category Planner

My global client requires an experienced Category Planner to join their team for a minimum period of 9 months.

This team is responsible for the development of medium- and long-term strategic plans by the mission for the medium to long-term strategy.

The mission is defined as the 'job to be done' online and in shops (e.g., Food for Now, Top Up, etc.)

This team creates the building blocks and road maps to deliver long-term growth, by identifying future trends by working closely with the Consumer Insights team to combine customer data (internal and external), industry and supplier data to form sales growth plans and inventing ways to surprise and delight customers ahead of their expectations.

Category Planners are responsible for the overall strategic plans for customer proposition, understanding the customer need and industry landscape. Areas of responsibility are broken out by customer mission (e.g., the weekly shop, top-up, fresh food for now and later, etc.) (Senior Category Manager) or category (Category Manager).

Within these subject areas, the Category Planners are expected to demonstrate customer and category knowledge, advocate for a quality customer experience, and identify medium-and long-term growth opportunities and risk identification, partnering across the organization (Buying, Marketing, Consumer Insights, and Pricing).

In this role, you will:

(1) Work backward from the customer to build category strategies - how to grow footfall/traffic and drive conversion:

* Leveraging the latest proposition, insights, marketing, merchandising, and competitor analysis to create data books to inform category mission strategy

* Build Strategy for Store & online - overlaying store-type clusters and geographies.

* Bring the plans together and define strategy - where are the synergies across Stores and Online, where do we need to have different strategies, Impact to sourcing/buying e.g. SKU count reduction/alignment across businesses

(2) Build assortment strategy - linking to the above mission plan how do we define total ASIN count/vendors to manage

* Develop data lead SKU strategy by Mission / Category across stores and online

* Define SKU shape/taxonomy across channels

* Create a roadmap to execute, e.g. working with merchandising to manage the range review program

A successful Category Planner must be able to:

* Develop and leads long-term strategies and cross-category plans by dedicated mission or category.

Examples of this include leading cross-functional work to build recommendations to increase average basket size or repeat frequency of customers (working with Pricing, Buying, Marketing, and Customer Insights); Innovating mission-based promotions on value offers (working with Buying and Marketing); responding to short-medium term tactical business needs, reacting to weekly sales trends (working with Buying and Merchandising, Marketing, Pricing).

* Determine and prioritize business opportunities, identify risks, and make recommendations to pursue.

* Aggregates and escalates industry trends, demonstrating a broad understanding of the internal and external business landscape and prioritizes work to ensure an optimal customer experience.

* Works cross-functionally to implement scalable solutions to address customer pain points.

* Identifies opportunities to differentiate customers' experience from the competition, including selection strategies.

This Category Planner role requires at least 2 years of experience in a relevant role and/or industry.

Retail Corporate / FMCG, buying, category management, retail consultancy.

Interested? Please apply.

Duration: 9 months ( may extend)

Hybrid working

Parkside Recruitment Ltd is acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy. Parkside Recruitment is an Equal Opportunities Employer.