Retail Strategy & Insights Account Manager

Kcadclub; Kansas City (MO); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Bernstein-Rein in Kansas City seeks a Retail Strategy & Insights Account Manager to convert consumer, shopper, and retail signals into smarter growth strategies. The role blends analysis with storytelling to guide brand positioning, messaging, and market plans.

The ideal candidate analyzes sales, loyalty, and market data, collaborates with media and creative teams, and develops client-ready narratives and opportunity assessments to drive client growth.

Qualifications

• Experience in retail, CPG, grocery, restaurant, commerce, or multi-location consumer business.
• Experience translating business and consumer data into strategic recommendations, not just dashboards or reporting.
• Strong understanding of how consumer behavior, category dynamics, pricing, promotions, and shopper needs influence strategy.
• Experience with consumer, shopper, retail, loyalty, sales, category, syndicated, media measurement, and digital performance data.

Responsibilities

• Partner with client and internal teams to understand business context, revenue drivers, category priorities, and growth goals.
• Analyze and synthesize inputs from consumer research, shopper data, sales trends, and competitive intelligence to identify insights.
• Translate insights into strategic direction informing brand positioning, messaging, and full-funnel marketing plans.
• Develop client-ready strategic narratives, business reviews, and planning materials.
• Identify consumer tension, business opportunities, and strategic roles for brands in-market.
• Lead cross-functional collaboration to ensure insights inform communications strategy and channel planning.

Skills

Retail/CPG experience

Strategic thinking

Data-to-insights translation

Storytelling/presentation

Cross-functional collaboration

GenAI awareness

Tools

Excel

Tableau

Power BI

Looker

SQL

Job description

Retail Strategy & Insights Account Manager

OVERVIEW

Bernstein-Rein is seeking a Retail Strategy & Insights Account Manager to help retail and consumer brands turn business, consumer, shopper, category, and cultural signals into smarter growth strategies.

This is not a reporting-only or pure data-science role. This person will be a strategic thinker who knows how to look across consumer behavior, retail performance, category dynamics, competitive activity, and marketing results to identify what matters most to a client’s business - and translate it into clear recommendations for brand positioning, messaging, media, creative, customer engagement, and growth planning.

The ideal candidate is equally comfortable reviewing sales and shopper data, listening to consumers, evaluating category and competitive shifts, and sitting with a creative or media team to sharpen the strategic response. They can explain not only what happened, but why it happened, what it means for the business, and what should change next.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

Partner with client and internal teams to understand business context, including revenue drivers, category priorities, product mix, promotional cadence, customer behavior, competitive pressure, and growth goals.

Analyze and synthesize multiple inputs, including consumer research, shopper and retail data, sales trends, loyalty or transaction data, media performance, social and cultural signals, and competitive intelligence, to identify meaningful insights and business opportunities.

Translate insights into strategic direction that informs brand positioning, messaging hierarchy, audience priorities, product or category focus, promotional strategy, and full-funnel marketing plans.

Help teams identify the consumer tension, business opportunity, and strategic role a brand, product, offer, or campaign should play in-market.

Work closely with media, creative, account, and client teams to ensure consumer and business insights are reflected in communications strategy, creative briefs, channel planning, measurement plans, and optimization recommendations.

Lead the development of client-ready strategic narratives, business reviews, opportunity assessments, category perspectives, and planning materials.

Develop clear hypotheses and learning agendas that help clients test messaging, audiences, offers, product/category priorities, and channel approaches over time.

Connect performance results back to strategy by identifying what is working, what is not, what may be changing in the market or consumer landscape, and where the team should adjust.

Use AI-enabled tools responsibly to accelerate research, synthesize large volumes of information, identify patterns, pressure-test hypotheses, and improve strategic outputs while applying appropriate human judgment, validation, and confidentiality standards.

WHAT YOU BRING

Experience in retail, CPG, grocery, restaurant, commerce, or another multi-location consumer business.

Experience in business strategy and insights, messaging strategy, shopper marketing, retail consulting, and agency environment.

A demonstrated ability to translate business and consumer data into strategic recommendations, not simply dashboards or reporting.

Strong understanding of how consumer behavior, category dynamics, product assortment, pricing or promotions, and shopper needs influence marketing and messaging strategy.

Experience working with consumer, shopper, retail, loyalty, sales, category, syndicated, media measurement, and digital-performance data.

The ability to connect quantitative findings with qualitative understanding of consumers, culture, and the competitive landscape.

Strong strategic writing, storytelling, and presentation skills, with the ability to make complex information clear and compelling for clients and internal teams.

Comfort working across disciplines and influencing media, creative, account, analytics, and client stakeholders.

Curiosity, strong business judgment, and an ability to move comfortably between detailed analysis and the larger strategic implication.

PREFERRED EXPERIENCE

Experience with syndicated retail and shopper data sources (i.e. NielsenIQ, Circana/IRI, Numerator, SPINS), POS, loyalty, panel, or consumer research datasets.

Experience developing communications strategy, messaging frameworks, creative briefs, audience strategies, or category-growth plans.

Familiarity with retail KPIs such as category penetration, household reach, basket size, trip frequency, repeat purchase, promotional lift, assortment productivity, customer acquisition, and lifetime value.

Experience using tools such as Excel, Tableau, Power BI, Looker, SQL, or other analytics platforms to explore and interpret data. Deep technical expertise is not required.

Experience using GenAI to accelerate strategic research, insight synthesis, planning, and reporting workflows.

ABOUT BR

At Bernstein-Rein, we believe retail intelligence comes from consumer insights, a true brand purpose, and a half a century of unrivaled experience. Our Retailigent® approach leverages consumer and B2B expertise to uncover insights and craft brand purposes that transform dreamers into disruptors. BR's core mission has remained the same since 1964: To impact the future of retail.

If you’re up for the challenge and want to join a team committed to accelerating our client’s growth, then we encourage you to apply!

Bernstein-Rein is an Equal Opportunity Employer