Merchandising Consultant

Major impact on all Albert Heijn shop floors across the country, that’s what this role is all about. The challenge is to embed customer insights even further into the decision making of the biggest retailer in the Netherlands. Through in-depth analyses and actionable recommendations, the Merchandising Consultant enables the retailer to improve commercial performance.

SYMPHONY EYC (SEYC)

Engage Your Customers, that’s what EYC stands for. They use the best technologies to gain relevant consumer insights and provide consulting services to improve customer engagement and business results. Based on large amounts of data, they figure out what triggers consumer loyalty, gain insights in different consumer lifestyles, understand customer price sensitivity and generate personalized CRM offers. SEYC is a global leader and partners with retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers in more than 70 countries. In the Netherlands, Albert Heijn is their key partner.

The Ahold team

Joeri Goedhart is Client Lead for Ahold at SEYC in Zaandam (Dutch headquarters). The local team can be divided into three key work areas: Customer Centric Retailing (CCR, 9 fte), Sales Insights Sharing (SIS, 3 fte) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM, 6 fte). The Merchandising Consultant is part of the CCR team, which provides customer insights led recommendations to Albert Heijn in support of commercial decision making in several areas. Next the Merchandising, these include Pricing & Promotions, Data & Segmentations, Format & Brand and Story Operations. The growth potential for the Merchandising Consultant lies within those teams, as well within SIS or CRM. International career steps are also among the possibilities.

Vacancy: Merchandising Consultant

The type of work consists of stakeholder management and consulting, utilizing SEYC’s proprietary tools and analytics. The Merchandising Consultant has strong, professional relationships within the Albert Heijn headquarters that cover Albert Heijn’s internal insights team as well as a broad range of Category Managers. The new Merchandising Consultant will take these relationships to the next level.

“What we do at SEYC is unique in the Netherlands. We offer a next level experience with customer insights work. An analytical mindset and a passion for (food) retail are a requirement for this role to drive the close collaboration and client impact.” – Joeri Goedhart, Client Lead at SEYC

The Merchandising Consultant supports Albert Heijn in achieving its category and business growth potential. This person supports the day to day category management process by answering key business questions. They also contribute to category planning and helps to evaluate category performance from a customer perspective. They translate customer insights into easy to understand actions to support better front-line decision-making within Albert Heijn. As an onsite employee, the Merchandising Consultant will provide outstanding professionalism, discretion and expertise in category management.

Commercial impact

This role is an opportunity to have significant impact on the shopping experience of millions of people. SYEC’s insights and recommendations have a proven track-record for driving innovation, de-risking delisting decisions, optimizing range decisions and fueling brand, presentation, price and promo optimization across a multitude of categories.

The Merchandising Consultant works with customer insights Analysts and utilizes SEYC’s proprietary web-based insights tools to translate data into insights and relevant and actionable plans for the retailer to improve their commercial performance. As a result, the position of Merchandising Consultant can be a very impactful and visible within SEYC, Albert Heijn and the retail market on the whole.

Personality

• Passion for retail
• Analytical
• Excellent listener, communicator & connector
• Comfortable interpreting large amounts of data

Experience

• At least 3 years’ experience
• Analytical position in retail or FMCG
• Category Management and/or consulting experience
• Comfortable interpreting large amounts of data
• Clear understanding of recent developments in retail