Category & Shopper Insights Manager

Category & Shopper Insights Manager

About the role

We are looking for a commercially minded, analytically rigorous Category & Shopper Insights Manager to help shape the next stage of growth for our pet-care brands.

This role will be the company’s internal expert on category dynamics, shopper behavior, portfolio performance, assortment, price-pack architecture, promotion, and retailer opportunity. You will turn data into clear recommendations that influence brand strategy, innovation, retailer line reviews, product launches, and commercial priorities.

You will bring an objective, fact-based point of view to the business—helping us decide where to invest, what to improve, what to launch, what to discontinue, and how to tell a credible category-growth story.

You will report into Brand & Product Marketing to ensure category and shopper insight informs upstream decisions—not just near-term account needs. You will work closely with Sales, Growth, Finance, Supply Chain, Product Development, and Commercial/Sales Enablement.

Category, shopper, and portfolio strategy

• Build and maintain an integrated view of category, shopper, consumer, competitor, channel, and portfolio performance across pet care.
• Identify category trends, shopper missions, unmet needs, white space, competitive threats, and opportunities for profitable growth.
• Translate broad findings into specific recommendations for brand positioning, product portfolio, innovation, assortment, pricing, promotion, packaging, and channel strategy.
• Lead SKU productivity, assortment, velocity, cannibalization, distribution, pricing, and promotional analysis.
• Develop recommendations on pack/price architecture and innovation priorities.
• Bring an independent, fact-based perspective to decisions—even when the data challenges existing assumptions or plans.

Retailer and commercial leadership

• Develop category-growth stories that position the company as a strategic retail partner, not simply a supplier seeking more distribution.
• Lead the insight and analytical foundation for line reviews, buyer presentations, joint business planning, assortment recommendations, and customer growth plans.
• Partner with Commercial/Sales Enablement to convert analysis into clear, visually compelling, customer-ready tools, presentations, launch kits, and product-training materials.
• Collaborate with account teams and brokers to understand customer objectives, merchant priorities, retailer constraints, and category opportunities.
• Support customer meetings, line reviews, promotional evaluations, and retailer-specific assortment discussions as the category/shopper expert when needed.
• Create reusable retailer/category templates and scorecards that improve the speed, consistency, and quality of commercial preparation.

Omnichannel insight

• Integrate retail, Amazon, DTC, marketplace, digital shelf, search, review, retail-media, and shopper signals into one coherent view of opportunity.
• Partner with Growth Marketing to translate Amazon/DTC performance learning into brand, portfolio, content, retail, and category recommendations.
• Partner with Brand/Product Marketing on product proposition, claims/benefit hierarchy, innovation, launch plans, and consumer education opportunities.
• Help identify where online demand, search behavior, review themes, and repeat-purchase patterns can strengthen retailer narratives and future retail expansion.

Analytics and operating discipline

• Own the category and shopper-insight calendar, recurring scorecards, category reviews, and prioritized learning agenda.
• Combine multiple data sources into decision-ready analysis: Circana/NIQ or comparable syndicated data, retailer POS data, panel/shopper data, Amazon and marketplace data, DTC/Shopify data, promotional data, sales data, and internal financial information.
• Present concise, persuasive, fact-based recommendations to senior leaders and cross-functional teams.

What success looks like

Within the first 12 months, you will have:

• Built a standard category-growth narrative and a repeatable line-review toolkit for priority retail partners.
• Identified actionable assortment, SKU-rationalization, innovation, price-pack, and promotional opportunities with quantified commercial implications.
• Created recurring category scorecards that are trusted and used in brand planning, account planning, product development, and leadership reviews.
• Improved the quality and speed of retailer/customer presentations by working closely with Commercial/Sales Enablement.
• Created an active learning loop between shopper/category evidence, retail data, Amazon performance, DTC behavior, search/reviews, Brand/Product Marketing, and Growth.
• Influenced measurable commercial decisions—not merely delivered reports.

Qualifications

Required

• 5+ years of relevant experience in CPG/FMCG category management, shopper insights, consumer insights, sales analytics, category strategy, revenue growth management, or a closely related commercial analytics role.
• Experience working for a CPG manufacturer, retailer, broker, or category-management agency supporting consumer brands.
• Strong hands-on experience with syndicated category data such as Circana/IRI, NielsenIQ, Numerator, SPINS, or comparable sources.
• Ability to combine multiple data sources, identify the commercial story, and convert analysis into a recommendation.
• Demonstrated experience supporting category reviews, line reviews, buyer presentations, assortment recommendations, shelf/space discussions, pricing/promotion analysis, or joint business planning.
• Advanced Excel and PowerPoint skills; comfort building models, analyzing large data sets, and creating executive- and customer-ready narratives.
• Familiarity with planogram/space-management tools, retailer line-review processes, and customer category-management expectations.
• Ability to manage priorities while maintaining rigor, clarity, and attention to detail.

Preferred

• Pet-care, health/wellness, consumables, OTC, personal care, household, or adjacent CPG-category experience.
• Experience with Walmart, Chewy, Tractor Supply, Amazon, mass, grocery, club, specialty, or omnichannel retail.
• Experience collaborating with Brand, Product Development, Sales, Finance, Supply Chain, and digital/e-commerce teams.

Who you are

• You are curious, objective, and commercially practical.
• You see the difference between a data point and an insight—and between an insight and a recommendation.
• You can simplify complexity without oversimplifying it.
• You are comfortable saying, “The evidence does not support that conclusion,” even when it is inconvenient.
• You can move comfortably between detailed analysis, retailer-ready storytelling, and executive-level recommendations.
• You are collaborative but not passive: you build alignment through evidence, clarity, and sound judgment.
• You understand that a strong category story must create value for the shopper, the retailer, and the brand.