Senior Manager, Technical Consumer Research

Location(s):

United States of America

City/Cities:

Atlanta

Travel Required:

00% - 25%

Relocation Provided:

Yes

Job Posting End Date:

November 5, 2025

Shift:

Job Description Summary:

Working as a key business partner with the Global Development & Innovation (GDI), Marketing, and Human Insight teams, the Senior Manager Technical Consumer Research will develop and lead comprehensive sensory and consumer research to guide and validate the development of complex consumer-centric innovation and renovation projects related to beverages, packaging, and equipment to deliver an exceptional consumer experience in alignment with consumer trends and our business strategies.

The role responsibilities to develop and implement research strategies to acquire advanced foundational knowledge to understand and define fundamental consumer and sensory requirements for specific beverage categories, in particular global Sparking, and to inspire our short term and long-term Innovation and Renovation project pipelines.

What You’ll Do for Us

Create sensory and consumer insights to support Innovation and Renovation projects:

• Build cross-functional relationships and be recognized as a key business partner on critical projects to drive a consumer centric research plan and influence project success.

• Develop and lead end-to-end complex sensory and consumer research projects to gain actionable insights to provide technical guidance to the development team.

  • Translate business needs into an actionable sensory and consumer research plan. Build and lead, end-to-end research learning plans, with appropriate consumer and sensory approaches and methodologies, grounded in sound data, to enable effective business decisions.

  • Use appropriate statistical analysis techniques and data analytics to decode research data (such as ANOVA, factorial analysis, and various modeling tools) and draw meaningful conclusions. 

  • Provide data-driven strategic recommendations on business solutions based on strong technical consumer research and deep understanding of the business environment. Identify, evaluate, and mitigate technical risks along the research process to increase confidence in final business decisions.

  • Define solutions based on an in-depth understanding of the consumer needs and competitive landscape. 

  • Communicate with clarity and precision by using data-driven storytelling to drive change and influence stakeholders. 

  • Understand and define fundamental consumer and sensory requirements of your categories and inject this knowledge into solution development. 

Proactively Build category knowledge to support short term and long-range business plans:

• Co-develop with the GDI category team a multiyear research plan to create critical category sensory and consumer insights to support the Global Sparkling Innovation agenda. Build and leverage product sensory, consumer, and category understanding to optimize the current portfolio and identify new opportunities in collaboration with the GDI category lead.

• Conduct in collaboration with the GDI Sparkling team competitive benchmarking and product/packaging evaluations to maintain a thorough understanding of the competitive dynamics within your categories. Identify drivers of liking and potential white space for future growth.

• Design and execute experiments to uncover the key drivers of consumer preference and optimal sensory user experiences for beverages.

Be a strategic business partner:

• Work as a close partner with the R&D categories team, Marketing and Human Insight team. Build cross-functional relationships to drive consumer centric solutions and development within the assigned categories.

• Be an active member of the global TCR category team to set up processes to build global and regional consumer and sensory insights. Lead regional and global projects on assigned categories, namely Sparkling. 

Build and leverage knowledge: 

• Take an active part in the GDI global TCR community and partner on research-on-research global projects.

• Be externally focused: Actively participate in the identification, development, and adoption of new methodologies, including innovative and agile methodologies, data sciences, for example.

• Continuous review and development of current best practices, research methodologies, and development of creative solutions to complex challenges. Be curious, identify, and try innovative alternative tools that bolster competitive advantage and deliver market leading results. 

Qual