Job Location: Bentonville, AR

Sales employees are responsible for ensuring they meet the time in role (TIR) requirements before applying for this position. Refer to the Sales Time In Role Guidelines or speak to your manager if you have questions on the requirements. All employees should align with their manager before applying. Employees who do not meet the TIR requirements must have manager approval to apply. TIR is calculated from the effective date the employee moved into their current position.

Why Hershey?
Over more than a century, our iconic brands have been built on a foundation of community investment and connections between people around the world. Equally competitive and compassionate, we continue to build a legacy as we invest in the people and snacks of the future.
From the beginning, Milton Hershey believed that if you do good, you’ll do well. By doing what we do best—from our delicious snacks to spreading goodness in our communities—we bring people together.

The spirit of creating human connections that motivated our founder over 125 years ago remains the driving force that inspires our 18,000 employees today. And while much has changed in America since the days of Milton Hershey, the power of building connections with those around us—from consumers and shareholders to our partners and employees—remains vital to the future of our children, our communities, and our business.

Why the Walmart Advisor Team?

As a member of the Walmart Advisor Team, we strive every day to be an indispensable partner to Walmart by providing strategic, consultative, data-driven guidance and leadership to fuel category growth. Our team has a proven track record of success, but we are not afraid to think differently and embrace new ideas.

We know our people are our competitive advantage and we empower them to be the unbiased category experts. We are a high-performing team that loves winning in a fast-paced environment, but never doing it alone. We thrive on a collaborative spirit; we are fiercely competitive in business and highly supportive of each other.

If you are fueled by results, intellectually curious, and want to get in on the ground floor of building the future of snacking in retail at Walmart – this is the team for you!

Summary of Role
The Seasonal Category Consultant will serve as a key constituent to internal team members, management & external customers; Success in the role will be defined as the development and implementation of category initiatives & strategies to meet and exceed customer financial objectives. The Category Consultant will be an expert in the pervasive application of insights to fuel category growth. Key to role is synthesizing business trends, competitive trends, shopper insights, financial insights, etc., to identify opportunities and develop merchandising solutions to drive the application of insights to fuel category growth through improving seasonal distribution, execution, and promotional activity utilizing JDA/Space Planning as a key tool.

The Category Consultant will influence the development and implementation of category initiatives in support of the Walmart Merchant Team using insights and capabilities.

What You’ll Do
- Support the line reviews and then apply the seasonal strategy to the building of planograms using Space Planning to support incremental category growth.
- Supports Walmart Merchant Team to ensure corporate objectives are met through tools such as, but not limited to, Circana (IRI), Luminate, Numerator, JDA/Prospace
- Synthesize actionable insights using retailer data, internal/syndicated data sources, and shopper insights.
- Acts as the Category Expert to ensure the execution of the Strategic Business Plan to make topline sales plan, net sales goals and achieve market share targets. This includes using tools and data to ensure the execution of the support strategic business plan.
- Basic ability to leverage Hershey’s internal order management system.
- Perform and analyze routine reports on performance and distribution using tools such as Mekko PPT Charts, PowerBI (Consume Dashboards), Excel.
- Develop and create Category Management department efficiencies.

What You’ll Need to Succeed
Education:
Bachelor’s Degree Required

Experience:
Category Management and/or CPG Sales experience (2-5 years)

Skills:
- Have working knowledge of space analytics and the tools to support it, such as JDA Space Planning / POG software
- Demonstrate strong data storytelling capabilities through strategic use of tools such as PowerPoint Charts and/ or Mekko.
- Display strong technical aptitude shown through data analysis capabilities.
- Foundational knowledge of analytic tools such as, Circana (IRI), Circana Scan Panel.
- Knowledge of consumer sales industry trends and complete working knowledge of the category management process.

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