WHAT DOES A CONSUMER INSIGHTS MANAGER DO?

Updated: Dec 24, 2024 - The Consumer Insights Manager spearheads client servicing and cultivates a robust network across various business functions to foster commercial success and innovative engagement strategies within the Entertainment team. This role involves managing and mentoring team members, maintaining up-to-date industry knowledge, and directing initiatives such as the post-launch survey program across multiple products and regions to gather actionable consumer insights. Additionally, the manager is responsible for generating detailed reports from diverse data collection methods including online surveys, focus groups, and interviews to continuously enhance service offerings and client communication.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Consumer Insights Manager

1. Consumer Insights Manager Duties

  • Consumer Segmentation Framework: Create an effective framework to develop a centralized consumer segmentation, applicable across the business for research samples, targeting brand or marketing initiatives, and trade activities.
  • Project Management: Define approach, deliver the project, and drive its implementation across the business.
  • Insight Development: Collate intelligence and synthesize into high-quality insights to support Imperial’s short-medium term consumer strategy.
  • Consumer Segmentation Update: Update the consumer segmentation approximately every three years, integrating it into all aspects of the business processes and technology.
  • Consumer Segmentation Adoption: Ensure the adoption of the new consumer segmentation from the CEO down to sales reps, using it as a primary lens to tailor products, services, and brands to consumer needs.
  • Educational Material Creation: Create materials to assist business partners in explaining and embedding consumer segments into the consciousness of the business.
  • Insight Integration: Collate local and produce global 'discover' insights for I2L processes, collaborating with the Head of Consumer Insights to ensure outputs reflect consumer insights.
  • Innovation Funnel Insights: Use consumer segmentation to form the basis of insights and foresights driving the innovation funnel.
  • Strategy Alignment: Work closely with colleagues to align insights with short, medium, and long-term consumer strategy.
  • Consumer Needs Analysis: Collaborate to build a clear picture of current and future consumer needs.
  • Best-Practice Audit: Support the CMI Director in auditing best-practice methods for designing and delivering consumer insights from internal and external sources.
  • Method Evaluation: Effectively collate and evaluate the best methods used across geographies.
  • Internal Communications Plan: Work with the CMI Director to develop an internal communications plan to ensure consumer segmentation is understood and adopted as part of the insights communication strategy.

2. Consumer Insights Manager Details

  • Roadmap Planning: Build the local CMI roadmap (plan, budget) by prioritizing, selecting key topics, and mobilizing the right resources.
  • GM Collaboration: Work closely with the divisions' General Managers on marketing and sales to actualize product and service information.
  • Insights Program Leadership: Lead the country Consumer and Market Insights program.
  • Target Penetration Strategy: Define guidelines for the business divisions on strategic target penetration.
  • Data Integration: Integrate market data and insights into consumer studies and analysis.
  • Project Setup: Set up organizations/project teams, governance, tools, and methods adapted to the realization of the country business strategy (benchmark).
  • Strategic Communication: Communicate, advise, and influence the right levels in the organization to impact business decisions (in daily life or strategic meetings).
  • Cross-Functional Partnerships: Build cross-functional partnerships to identify business questions and opportunities that help to understand consumer insight needs.
  • Research Translation: Analyze and translate business questions into research plans and deliver results to produce relevant and actionable insights for internal stakeholders.
  • Insight Development: Develop qualitative and quantitative insights using a variety of sources (e.g., leading consumer-focused primary research programs).
  • Content Program Development: Partner with marketing and sales teams to develop content programs, including articles and events that pair insights with marketing solutions.
  • Global Collaboration: Collaborate with regional insights teams to develop global research plans.

3. Consumer Insights Manager Responsibilities

  • Client Servicing & Networking: Ensuring the highest level of client servicing and developing a wide network within different business functions.
  • Relationship Building: Identify and build relationships with priority new business targets, leading to commercial success.
  • Engagement & Pipeline Management: Create engagement with the new business objective across the Entertainment team, owning the activity pipeline.
  • Client Brief Response: Responding to client briefs in an insightful and impactful way.
  • Insight Delivery & Improvement: Work with the rest of the team to ensure that high levels of insight are delivered and that we are constantly improving our offering.
  • Team Management & Mentorship: Direct management responsibility for a Client Executive, as well as being a mentor to the wider Entertainment team.
  • Market Development Awareness: Keeping up to date with all market developments that happen both fast and often.
  • Service Improvement Ideas: Contributing ideas for improving service, including data checking/coding, reporting tools, and survey questions.
  • Concern Communication: Highlighting any areas of concern to relevant operations teams and communicating to clients.
  • Post-Launch Survey Management: Running the new product post-launch survey program across multiple products, countries, and waves to provide critical insights from consumers activating new devices to help product managers, marketers, and engineers iteratively optimize products.
  • Consumer Insights Generation: Managing and generating consumer insights through online surveys, focus groups, one-on-one interviews, and video for a variety of products.
  • Insightful Reporting: Making compelling reports highlighting insights from various studies.

4. Consumer Insights Manager Job Summary

  • Portfolio Insights Leadership: Insights portfolio lead for Food/Beauty teams, partnering across all aspects of insights generation, including management of primary research requirements, consolidation across insights sources.
  • Category Insights Analysis: Lead insights for range reviews, incorporating customer and market data with trends insights and primary research to identify category opportunities.
  • Data Translation and Collaboration: Analyzing and translating key customer data metrics into clear recommendations, while integrating existing insights and ensuring strong collaboration across Trends & Innovation processes (Packaging/NPD).
  • Journey Insights Development: Lead the category journeys insights development plan, managing primary research programs, with strong collaboration across the wider insights and consumer journeys teams.
  • Research Support and Management: Support the Consumer Journeys team in managing and embedding primary research projects across need states aligned to the food and beauty strategy, utilizing a range of techniques across ethnographic, qualitative, and quantitative.
  • Consumer Connection Program Development: Support the Consumer Insights Lead in developing and embedding a regular customer connection program, utilizing both an immersion program and ad hoc customer survey work to enable fast decision-making based on consumer insight.
  • Insights Process Creation: Support the Consumer Insights Lead in the creation of an annual insights process that embeds insights across the business.
  • Trading Insights Leadership: Led the annual insights process for Trading with Food/Beauty, being the key point of contact for customer journey scorecards and customer understanding for the portfolio.
  • Actionable Insights Delivery: Across all of these methodologies, provide compelling outputs and deliver actionable insights to the business.
  • Insight Collaboration: Work with insight colleagues, sharing and adopting best practices and insights to provide a singular, consistent consumer and shopper view.

5. Consumer Insights Manager Accountabilities

  • Research Management: Manage full implementation, analysis, and reporting of enterprise-wide research.
  • Project Execution Development: Develop and manage the execution of custom research projects across functions to support consumer insights.
  • Methodology Development: Develop a wide range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies including online surveys and interviews.
  • Survey Execution: Program and execute surveys via a research platform.
  • Segmentation Analysis: Work with the Database Marketing team to identify proper segments and sample sizes for research.
  • Insight Development: Develop actionable insights through deep data analysis and identify resulting recommendations.
  • Report Creation: Create reports to summarize key findings and implications of research to support business.
  • Third-Party Analysis: Review and analyze third-party research reports.
  • Stakeholder Reporting: Deliver reports to stakeholders and effectively present results.
  • Research Recommendation: Develop recommendations for future research based on data analysis.
  • Trend Awareness: Remain current with new research tools and industry trends.