Joining us as Senior Strategic Planning Manager you’ll own, develop and bring to life the Value Strategy for Food, focusing on the trade and promotional activation strategy across our Food business.
You’ll use customer insights and data to develop clear, aligned plans in collaboration with cross-functional teams, including Category, Marketing, Supply Chain, Membership, and Media, ensuring a joined-up approach to delivering business objectives.
Through your role, you’ll help to make sure that we are showcasing our value and coop difference for our customers and members.
In this varied role, some of your responsibilities will include (but not be limited to):
- Owning the end-to-end planning of a trade and activation plan (including the delivery of key trading events)
- Developing and delivering event strategies which drive sales and customer engagement
- Building detailed seasonal and event plans (including timelines, product focus, pricing, promotional mechanics and activation strategy)
- Collaborating with Marketing and Media teams to deliver campaigns (including in-store, digital and social activation)
- Monitoring event performance, identifying risks and opportunities
- Ensuring events are supported by clear and concise customer propositions across in-store and digital channels
- Working with Supply Chain to ensure availability and smooth execution of events
- Leading post-event reviews, capturing insight and learnings for future events
- Supporting Central Operations and Internal Comms teams to align our colleagues to a clear, quarterly activation plan.
Through your role and engagement with senior stakeholders across food, you'll be helping to make sure that the customer is at the heart of decision making, continuously balancing commercial and customer outcomes.
We're looking for a strategic and commercially minded retail professional who can see the bigger picture and turn ideas into action. You'll be a confident communicator with excellent organisational skills, able to manage multiple priorities while building strong relationships across a wide range of stakeholders.
You thrive in collaborative environments and enjoy working with others to deliver shared goals.
With a deep understanding of retail, customer needs and commercial drivers, you'll bring the ability to influence, challenge and inspire positively, helping teams align behind a clear vision.
You'll be comfortable working with complex data and insights, using them to identify opportunities, challenge the status quo and drive meaningful change.
Most importantly, you'll be able to bring ideas to life in a way that's engaging, compelling and easy for others to understand.
Experience of leading strategic change within a retail environment is essential.
Preferably you will also bring expertise in category management, retail media, or project management experience delivering large-scale quarterly events and initiatives- although this experience is not essential.
Everyone is welcome here. We’re happy to make reasonable adjustments so that all our candidates can show us how they’ll perform their role. There is a section in the application form where you can provide any additional information. Please use this section to include any reasonable adjustments you need, and we’ll do our best to support you through our recruitment process
What benefits are available to you?
In addition to our competitive salaries, our colleagues also benefit from:
Reward and Benefits
- Fantastic colleague discount - Reward ££’s and discounts across our Retail and Funeral businesses.
- Retail discounts- our hub offers colleagues access to hundreds of exclusive retail discounts, savings on days out and holiday discounts.
- Colleague Dividend- We pay a share of our profits to eligible colleagues as a thank you for their contribution to our success.
- Colleague recognition- we celebrate our colleague’s achievements both personally and professionally
- Personalised learning and development- with easy access to a wide range of training programmes
- Paid time for volunteering- we encourage our colleagues to spend three days per year taking part in volunteering, fully paid for by us.
- Enhanced family friendly policies- to help you feel fully supported during any significant life events.
Wellbeing
- Annual health check kit and virtual GP – Finger prick blood test kit, that is sent to Square Healthcare for your personal healthcare report, and access to a virtual GP 7 days a week 8am to 8pm for you and your family.
- Colleague assistance programme – to support you and your family when you need it the most.
- Healthcare Cashplan- your wellbeing is important, so you’ve got the opportunity to contribute into a voluntary plan that helps pay towards a range of healthcare expenses.
- Company sick pay – We offer company sick pay to colleagues so that you can focus on getting better and returning to work in full health.
- Life Assurance- after an initial qualifying period, you’ll get free life assurance cover, that pays your nominated beneficiary if you die while you’re working for us.
- We’ve got you – our colleague wellbeing campaign, making wellbeing benefits and resources accessible and relevant to the role that you do.
- Give as you earn- helping you support charities which mean something to you.
Financial Wellbeing
- iTrent Financial Wellbeing (Wagestream)- offers something for all our colleagues, whether you want to track your finances, save some money, or access up to 50% of your earned pay flexibly in a way that suits you.
- The Money Co-op – Free access to support all aspects of your financial wellbeing, such as savings and loans at competitive rates.
- Salary Sacrifice schemes:
- Electric Vehicle scheme – Option to purchase your EV through salary sacrifice
- Share Incentive Plan (SIP) – option to buy shares within the Society, where they will attract interest and £10 worth of matching shares.
- Cycle to Work scheme – Option to purchase your bicycle and accessories through salary sacrifice
- Holiday buy- colleagues can buy up to a week extra of annual leave each year
- Company Pension- you can access a company pension scheme with us as well as access to Pension wellbeing information.
- Nous – smart assistant that can save you money and time on managing your household bills.
To find out more about all of these plus many more reasons to join us, please visit Rewards and benefits - Central Coop (careers.coop)
OurCoop is the UK’s largest independent co-operative Society, with more than one million Members and 13,000 colleagues operating in communities nationwide. It was formed by bringing together Central Co-op, The Midcounties Co-operative and Chelmsford Star Co-op to create a stronger, member-owned organisation rooted in shared co-operative values.
The Society trades nationally through its family of businesses while remaining deeply rooted in local communities. Its footprint spans Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and Bedfordshire in the South and West; the Midlands including Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Northamptonshire; the North including Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Yorkshire; and the East of England, including Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk.
OurCoop and its family of businesses are trading names of Central England Co-operative Limited.
