Why did you choose to buy a case of beverage for your party last week? You might think it was your own personal preference. But then, you might be wrong.
In the past few years, shopping at the grocery store and other large retailers has changed quite dramatically. Don’t feel bad if you haven’t noticed; you’re not supposed to notice. All you’re supposed to do is enjoy your shopping experience. And making your shopping experience enjoyable is the job of a new breed of behind-the-scenes marketers: Shopper Marketers.
For over six years, Olga Yurovski was a shopper marketer for ConAgra, an $8 billion branded food company. Her job was to leverage shopper behavior data to benefit ConAgra’s brands. In other words, she partnered with major retailers to find and implement shopper-focused ways to increase sales and brand equity.
Her mornings were spent meeting with retailers, sales teams, category managers, marketing reps, researchers, and display and package designers. Her afternoons were spent responding to large volumes of email requests and text messages. Her nights were spent extrapolating data from Excel spreadsheets to create PowerPoint reports to present to upper management the next day.
Sound complicated? That’s because it is.