Shopper Insights Manager

This role is an office position based in Louisville, KY.

What the Role Is

The Shopper Insights Manager will be responsible for helping drive category growth and strengthen retailer partnerships across Heaven Hill’s portfolio of brands. This role will operate as a key extension of the broader insights function, helping shape the strategic learning and storytelling for enterprise and commercial priorities.

The Manager will serve as a strategic partner to Sales, Marketing, Commercial Planning and Finance teams by translating shopper, consumer, category and retail insights into actionable business recommendations. The role will support both proactive strategic initiatives and responsive business needs across brands, channels, customers and commercial teams.

This role is focused on leading the development of compelling category stories, retailer-specific insights and data-driven strategies that drive growth across on-premise and off-premise channels. Ideal experience combines strong analytical capabilities, storytelling expertise, retailer understanding, and strategic thinking to influence stakeholders and retail partners.

How You Will Spend Your Time?

Shopper & Category Insights Leadership

• Serve as a strategic thought partner and subject matter expert on shopper behavior, category and consumer trends, retail dynamics, and market opportunities.
• Develop actionable shopper and category insights that drive business growth across assigned channels, customers, and brands.
• Build and activate annual shopper and category learning agendas aligned with commercial and brand priorities.
• Translate complex data into clear, compelling narratives that support retailer and internal business decisions.
• Identify emerging shopper, channel, and competitive trends to uncover opportunities for assortment, merchandising, pricing, promotion, and display optimization.
• Collaborate with Sales, Marketing, Shopper Marketing, Commercial Strategy, and Finance/Rev Man teams to embed shopper and category insights into business planning.
• Develop retailer-specific category growth stories and insight-based selling narratives that support Joint Business Planning and commercial priorities; to inform retailer presentations, line reviews, and category strategy development.

Business Partnership & Internal Client Support

• Serve as a trusted insights partner to Brand Marketing, Sales, Commercial Strategy, Revenue Management, Finance, and Shopper Marketing teams.
• Manage a dynamic mix of proactive strategic initiatives and reactive/ad hoc business requests, balancing speed, rigor, and business impact.
• Partner with the Senior Director, Consumer Insights to prioritize learning agendas, support evolving business needs, and ensure alignment to enterprise priorities.
• Consult with cross-functional stakeholders to identify insight needs, frame business questions, and deliver actionable recommendations that influence decision-making.
• Support organizational capability building by helping teams better leverage shopper, category, and consumer insights in planning and execution.

Data Analytics & Insight Development

• Integrate, analyze and synthesize multiple data sources, including syndicated, shopper, and behavioral and customer data to uncover actionable business opportunities and develop commercially relevant recommendations
• Utilize data sources such as NielsenIQ, Numerator, IWSR, NABCA, SipSource and eCommerce analytics.
• Integrate qualitative and quantitative insights to develop holistic shopper and category stories.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Influence strategic decisions through persuasive storytelling, strong analytics, and business acumen.
• Build strong relationships with retailer partners, distributors, syndicated data providers, and agency partners.
• Foster a culture of curiosity, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Respond to time-sensitive commercial and customer requests with clear, actionable insights and recommendations.
• Balance long-term category and shopper learning priorities with near-term business opportunities and stakeholder needs.

Who You Are…

Required Skills and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, Analytics, Economics, Statistics, or related field.
• Minimum 5 years of experience in shopper insights, category management, sales analytics, commercial strategy, or related CPG functions.
• Strong experience accessing and analyzing syndicated data sources including NielsenIQ/CircanaIRI, Numerator, retailer POS, loyalty, and panel data.
• Experience building category reviews, retailer selling stories, and actionable business recommendations.
• Demonstrated ability to independently execute shopper and category analyses, develop retailer-facing recommendations, and manage cross-functional projects.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and strategic thinking capabilities.
• Excellent communication, presentation, and storytelling skills.
• Demonstrated ability to influence cross-functional teams, stakeholders and external retail partners.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.

Valued but not Required Skills and Experience:

• Beverage alcohol industry experience strongly preferred.
• Experience working directly with major retail customers across grocery, mass, club, convenience, or eCommerce channels.
• Experience with advanced analytics, data visualization, and dashboarding tools such as Tableau, Power BI, SQL, Python, or Excel modeling.

Physical Requirements

While performing duties of job, the employee is occasionally required to:

• Stand; walk; use hands and fingers to handle, or feel objects, and use a computer; reach with hands and arms
• Lift and/or move up to 20 pounds

• Paid Vacation
• 11 Paid Holidays
• Health, Dental & Vision eligibility from day one
• FSA/HSA
• 401K match
• EAP
• Maternity/Paternity Leave