Category Development Manager, Philippines
1 month ago
Job Purpose/Overview:
Our Mars Wrigley Asia (MWA) ambition is to bring 1B smiles to our Consumers and Customers, becoming a $1B NSV sustainable business by 2030 vs close to $0.5B in 2022. This will be realized by a strong focus in our SEED markets and accelerate with inorganic growth.
This is a newly created role to support SEED markets – Philippines and Vietnam and will be reported directly to the Asia Category Leadership cluster team and dotted line to market MDs. This will reinforce the SEED market lens in the formation of the Asia strategy.
This role is accountable for using market, shopper and customer insights to assess and identify category growth opportunities, to develop and execute the relevant category solutions to fuel category growth, drive customer engagement and optimizing sales revenue and profitability at category and portfolio level.
The role engages and partners with multiple internal teams to drive appropriate cross-functional collaboration to meet customers, shoppers and Mars needs. This role is responsible for leading best in class of Category Leadership directly with customers that has potential for significant future growth in PH & VN and develop customer growth plans grounded into localised category vision.
Key Responsibilities:
Lead the Category Leadership strategy for PH & VN business by deliver all relevant analyses and customer ready materials focused on delivering shopper, channel, and category centric solutions to develop Mars credentials with our customers as “THE” trusted category expert.
Lead to localised Category Vision and Merchandising Must Haves (MMH) into the local picture of success (PICOFS) with collaboration with Sales, Customer Experience, Customer Marketing and Perfect Store teams.Create compelling insight led category solutions & proposals, which influence shopper behaviour and convert more shoppers and transactions at the point of sale. Be responsible to support Sales team on the category story, and post-assessment with a ROI mindset to continuously raise the bar on execution and fuel growth.Develop a recommended confectionery planogram (TZ, Main Aisle, Secondary Display) for retailers based on multi-angle analysis and MMH principles to drive category growth.Advise customer priority via delivery of Strategic Channel Management (SCM) analysis.Lead PQA analysis and discussion with CBU, Sales and Customer Marketing to drive strategic portfolio growth.Market share analysis to monitor business performance.Support sales team on joint business planning engagements with key customers and internally with cross-functions.Job Specifications/Qualifications:
Min. Bachelor’s Graduate calibre.Category Leadership/Sales/Customer Marketing background with successful experience of customer development.6-8 Years+ experience in blue chip FMCGs (suppliers or retailers).Fluent verbal and written English-language skills.Excellent understanding of FMCG context, retail landscape and merchandising process in physical stores of key channels including General Trade, CVS, Supermarket, Hypermarket, Drug store etc.High analytical acumen with ability to drive and translate insights into relevant strategies and tactics (actions/initiatives) internally and for execution with our customers.Experience of engaging, influencing customers with proven ability to build strong and effective customer relationships of all sizes and motivate stakeholders internally and externally.Strong track record of developing and executing visions and strategies with the ability to inspire and led a matrix organisation to deliver business results consistently.Experience with B2B/B2C environments with a proven track record of growing these channels and an excellent understanding of retailers’ business models and how category leadership enables marketing and sales.Expert with Nielsen Tools - Spaceman & Desktop Answer/Discover (Retail Audit) while other data/insight resources ex. Euromonitor is the plus.Has the ability to navigate complex situations and challenge the status quo with a can do and attitude. Self-reliant, decisive, and resilient and able to respond and adapt to a fast moving, swiftly changing environment.Thrives in an entrepreneurial environment which requires courageous out of the box thinking and living in the future. Orientation is towards innovation and solution-based problem solving.Commercially and financially astute with a sound grounding in operational and strategic sales roles and proven business judgement with an understanding of the commercial impact of one’s own decision making.