Marketing Insights Researcher

Voted among the Chicago Tribune’s Top Workplaces for six consecutive years, we are a 500+ person strong, family-owned global organization dedicated to helping kids succeed in school and develop a love of learning. In addition to high-quality, hands-on products like VersaTiles® and Cuisenaire® Rods, we make award-winning toys, including top sellers such as the Pretend & Play® Cash Register, the Farmer’s Market Color Sorting Set and Toy of the Year winner Botley® the Coding Robot as well as Educational Insights top sellers Kanoodle®, GeoSafari® Jr. series, and Playfoam™. We pride ourselves on being committed to our employees’ personal and professional development, a thriving culture, and a diverse, creative atmosphere. Along with our culture and competitive benefits package, we offer a variety of opportunities for training and development. We are looking for professionals who are truly just kids at heart! We are currently seeking a Marketing Insights Researcher to join our Shared Services Analytics Team! This role is a critical partner to our internal teams and provides a great opportunity to join a high performing team in a hands-on role helping drive business and shape strategies. If telling compelling stories with data is your jam, join us! Transform complex data into simple, visually engaging charts, graphs, and infographics across all business functions. Own Market Research Function: Internal owner of all qualitative and quantitative market research, including surveys, focus groups, and third-party software. Draft surveys, own focus group scripts, serve as the main point of contact with external partners, complete all analysis of research, and present results to internal stakeholders. Build scalable retail insights function by leveraging AI software to pull internal and external data to develop strategy and report results. Support Product Innovation: Collaborate with product development teams to translate data and research into actionable insights to inform new product ideas and innovation. Participate in product brainstorm sessions and testing Own Competitive Research Function : Support Business Updates and Planning: Provide analytics and insights support for annual planning and quarterly business updates, assisting with data insights and visualization. Support Strategic Creative Projects: Create product concepts, mockups, sell sheets, packaging explorations, and other special projects that transform consumer insights and business opportunities into compelling visual stories. What we’re looking for (Key Performance Objectives): Create Insights Vault consisting of all prior company research (focus groups, surveys, etc.), where any employee can easily find and review prior research. Develop a 12-month, prioritized research roadmap that balances the needs across all departments (product, marketing, school, sales) and stay within budget. Audit our internal tech stack for market research and suggest alternative software to improve our effectiveness. Audit our current catalog of PowerBI reports and dashboards within the sales and marketing departments and recommend any optimization or consolidation opportunities. Become fluent in PowerBI and audit existing dashboards and reports for data visualization opportunities. Bachelor's degree in a marketing or digital analytics related field Experience: 4+ years of marketing or digital analytics experience Execution Excellence: Highly organized, able to manage multiple projects in parallel, and deliver reliably against timelines Market Research: Knowledge of quantitative research methods (survey design, analysis and statistics) Technical Skills: Familiarity with data visualization tools and modern analytics tools; ability to learn and adopt new platforms quickly; Analysis Skills: Experience analyzing and evaluating consumer data and developing actionable insights Visualization & Reporting: Proficiency in Power BI (or other visualization tools) to build scalable, automated dashboards This role will be filled by our internal recruitment team, so no assistance is needed from any outside staffing agency at this time. Total compensation includes profit sharing bonus potential, 401k matching, and a variety of other benefits (details can be found here ). #