Category Planner

Role: Category Planner
Expected duration: 8 Months
Start: ASAP
Pay rate: £360 per day (PAYE) + Holiday Pay
Location: London (Hybrid working)

Our client is well known groceries retailer. They are looking for a Senior Category Planner to join their team.
This team is responsible for the development of medium- and long-term strategic plans by mission for the medium to long-term strategy. Mission is defined as the ‘job to be done’ online and in shops (e.g., Food for Now, Top Up, etc.) This team is responsible for 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., weekly shop, top up, fresh food for now and later, etc). Within these subject areas, the Category Planners are expected to demonstrate customer and category knowledge, be an advocate for a quality customer experience, identifying medium-and long-term growth opportunities and risk identification, partnering across the organization (Buying, Marketing, Consumer Insights, and Pricing).

Key responsibilities

(1) Work backwards 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 the business 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 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 roadmap to execute, e.g. working with merchandising to manage range review program

Requirements

• At least 2 years’ experience in a relevant role and / or industry, experience in a relevant role and / or industry: Retail Corporate / FMCG, buying, category management, retail consultancy
• 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, 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 prioritise business opportunities, identify risks and make recommendations to pursue.
• Aggregates and escalates industry trends, demonstrating broad understanding of 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 the customer experience from the competition, including selection strategies.