Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organization
The Director, Marketplace Development & Consumer Insights serves as a strategic leader responsible for shaping the future growth agenda of adidas North America through deep consumer understanding, marketplace intelligence, and enterprise-wide strategic planning. This role sits at the intersection of consumer behavior, commercial strategy, analytics, and innovation, leading the identification of emerging opportunities, risks, and growth vectors across channels, categories, consumers, and geographies.
The Director is accountable for establishing a world-class Consumer Insights capability spanning qualitative, quantitative, behavioral, location-based, synthetic, and AI-enabled research methodologies. Through the translation of insight into action, this role drives enterprise decision-making and influences priorities across Brand, Commercial, Product, Strategy, Finance, and Executive Leadership teams. In parallel, this role leads Marketplace Development efforts to shape the future marketplace ecosystem, ensuring adidas remains competitive, consumer-led, and differentiated across physical and digital channels.
Key Responsibilities
Consumer Insights Leadership
- Establish a comprehensive consumer intelligence ecosystem connecting consumer needs, motivations, barriers, behaviors, and purchase drivers to business decision-making.
- Translate complex consumer, market, and competitive dynamics into actionable strategic recommendations for senior leadership.
- Identify future growth opportunities through consumer trend forecasting, whitespace analysis, and emerging market identification.
- Serve as the organization's thought leader on consumer behavior, retail trends, and marketplace evolution.
Research & Insight Generation
Own and govern the end-to-end consumer insights practice across qualitative, quantitative, behavioral, in-market, spatial, and location intelligence methodologies, including focus groups, interviews, shop-alongs, online communities, brand tracking, segmentation, concept testing, pricing research, market sizing, digital analytics, customer journey analytics, retail experience studies, competitive benchmarking, trade area analysis, consumer mobility analysis, site selection intelligence, and geographic demand forecasting.
AI & Synthetic Research Innovation
- Establish synthetic research methodologies as a complementary capability to traditional consumer research.
- Develop frameworks for hypothesis generation, testing, validation, and decision support using AI-powered consumer intelligence.
- Drive innovation in predictive consumer analytics, synthetic audiences, and simulation-based decision making.
Marketplace Development Leadership
- Identify growth opportunities across channels, consumers, categories, geographies, and key cities.
- Develop strategic recommendations regarding market expansion, investment prioritization, distribution strategy, and marketplace optimization.
- Lead analyses assessing marketplace attractiveness, competitive positioning, consumer demand potential, and commercial opportunity.
- Integrate consumer, competitive, market, financial, and business intelligence into a unified strategic view of marketplace performance.
- Lead high-priority, cross-functional strategic initiatives from opportunity identification through execution and operationalization.
Leadership, Collaboration & Organizational Influence
- Act as a trusted advisor to senior leaders across Commercial, Brand, Finance, Product, Business Development, Operations, and Strategy functions.
- Influence decision making through fact-based recommendations, compelling storytelling, and executive-ready insight synthesis.
- Build and develop a high-performing team of insight, analytics, and strategy professionals.
- Drive capability building across the organization through education, frameworks, and best-practice sharing.
- Coach and mentor team members while developing future leadership talent.
Knowledge, Skills & Abilities
- Deep expertise across qualitative, quantitative, behavioral, and applied consumer research methodologies.
- Strong understanding of retail, wholesale, digital commerce, shopper behavior, and marketplace dynamics.
- Demonstrated experience developing and implementing enterprise-level consumer insights strategies.
- Expertise in hypothesis-led problem solving, consumer trend forecasting, and strategic planning.
- Strong understanding of emerging AI technologies, machine learning applications, synthetic research methodologies, and advanced analytics.
- Exceptional executive communication, storytelling, and influence skills.
- Proven ability to simplify complex insights into actionable business recommendations.
Requisite Education & Experience
- 10+ years of experience across Consumer Insights, Strategy, Analytics, Marketplace Development, Commercial Strategy, or related functions.
- Proven leadership experience managing high-performing teams and enterprise-wide initiatives.
- Experience within leading consumer goods, retail, apparel, sportswear, technology, or consulting organizations.
- Demonstrated success influencing executive-level decisions through research, analytics, and strategic recommendations.
- Experience implementing AI-enabled research, advanced analytics, or innovation capabilities preferred.
- Master's Degree or MBA preferred.
adidas is an Equal Opportunity Employer that celebrates diversity, supports inclusiveness, and encourages individual expression. The company offers comprehensive benefits including medical, dental, vision, prescription drug coverage, disability and life insurance, a 401(k) plan, stock purchase plan, education assistance, paid parental leave, flexible time off, paid holidays, and an annual bonus opportunity.
At adidas, this position follows a hybrid work policy requiring office attendance Monday through Thursday, with flexibility to work remotely on Friday. The working location is Portland, OR.