Shopper Solutions Walmart Merch & COE

Job Title: Shopper Solutions Manager, Walmart and Merch COE

Pay Level: 2B

Job Location: Hershey PA preferred

Requisition Number: 124816 

Posted Date: 3/27/2025 

Summary

The Shopper Solutions Manager, Walmart and Merch COE is a pivotal member of the HSY Sales team with important responsibilities impacting the sales, share, and P&L performance for our entire organization. Below is a list of deliverables for the role:

• Own and drive high-level continuous improvement initiatives across Walmart and Merch COE for Merchandising and Portfolio functions to reduce cost, increase retail performance, and drive speed-to-market.  Responsibilities include, but are not limited to, finding process efficiencies and eliminating unnecessary workstreams to increase speed, and creating and sharing high-impact BDPs to enhance retail sales and experience

• Identify, develop, and manage National merchandising and customer-specific product solutions that drive incremental distribution and share of shelf for key strategic retailers. Work cross-functionally with Sales, Omni-Marketing, Shopper/Human Insights, Category Management, Operations, Packaging, Finance, R&D, and Retail Sales as well as external vendors and agencies to create these solutions

• Own the P&L development and optimization to ensure delivery of HSY metrics

• Provide and maintain visibility across the organization so that Merchandising and Portfolio BDPs and solutions are shared as appropriate and unnecessary customization and complexity are avoided

• Remain actively involved with customer teams planning processes and meetings to develop shopper solutions that satisfy customer opportunities and meet internal hurdles and timelines

• Assist Marketing with Merchandise mix recommendations and volume validations “strawmen” for program / innovation forecasting

Responsibilities

Customer Specific Product Development

• Own the creation and management of product solutions for assigned customers including business case development and Accolade management. Specific focus on core packs, strategic brands and anchor events.

• Develop, maintain, and leverage key cross-functional relationships in Sales, Omni-Marketing, Shopper/Human Insights, Category Management, Operations, Packaging, Finance, R&D, Retail Sales and external partners to ensure solutions are best suited to the goals of driving revenue, share, and profit

• Maintain close connectivity with the Retail and Sales team to fully understand the in-store environment, recognize executional issues, and identify new opportunities

Innovation

• Attend Marketing innovation meetings representing the Merch COE team providing valuable insights into potential executions for the various COT.

• Provide regularly scheduled Innovation and OPM recaps to the Customer Activation team to ensure customer-specific solutions are appropriately developed

Customer Planning

• Remain actively involved with Customer Team planning to identify current and future product needs on core packs and anchor events within company processes and lead times

• Maintain connectivity to other Shopper Solutions Managers to share best practices and prevent duplication in custom vehicle development

• Lead and represent Sales team on shopper solutions related, ad hoc projects such as Retail Ready Packaging, Waste Initiatives, Allocations, Merchandising Transformation, Shopper Insights, etc as needed

• Support 3-year JBP customer planning with strategic project and P&L support

Business and Financial Management

• Understand and analyze syndicated and shopper data from Customers to identify product opportunities and make fact-based strategic recommendations, as well as stay up to date on trends, forward-looking forecasts, and consumer needs

• Advocate for smart customer-specific solutions across internal teams and leadership to best support the team’s growth strategies inline with company goals

• Actively manage customer-specific product portfolio to continually drive sales and profit performance.  Proactively evaluate items as needed for rationalization

Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor’s degree required.
  Experience: 5+ years’ experience in Sales, Category Management, Finance and/or Marketing; Project Management experience recommended