Director, Research and Consumer Insights
At Edmunds we’re driven to make car buying easier. Ever since we began publishing printed car guides in the 60’s, the company has been in the business of trust, innovating ways to empower and support car shoppers. When Edmunds launched the car industry’s first Internet site in 1994, we established a leadership position online and have never looked back. Now, as one of the most trusted review sites on the Internet, millions of visitors use our research, shopping and buying tools every month to make an easy and informed decision on their next car. For consumers, we bring peace of mind. For dealers, we make tools to help them solve their problems and sell more cars. How do we do it, you ask? The key ingredients are our enthusiastic employees, progressive company culture and cutting-edge technology. Want to join the team? Read on to find out how!
What You’re Applying For:
The Director, Market Research and Consumer Insights will work independently and in conjunction with the VP of Strategy and Insights to lead the Edmunds Research team, responsible for market research and consumer insights across qualitative and quantitative primary research, as well as secondary research, to help the business identify new areas of opportunity, including product, experience, and sales enhancements. In addition, the Director will partner with the VP and others across the organization to proactively identify needs, validate hypotheses that require testing, and collaborate to turn research results and output into action. Ultimately, the Director is responsible for leading a relatively new research function as it becomes the go-to resource for understanding the customer, dealer, and OEM needs, market trends, and competitive intelligence that are critical to the sustainable growth of the company.
What You’ll Do:
- Conduct market research on and build knowledge of key trends in the automotive and tech industries, including overall market trends, growth, and competitors, to inform and support the strategy for Edmunds and help shape Edmunds' positioning in the market
- Partner closely with Product, Product Innovation, Marketing, and Sales teams to identify key integration opportunities and how best to use research to support their goals
- Develop and execute primary research from end-to-end, including defining the project scope, developing survey/research, managing vendors, analyzing results, and delivering/communicating key insights
- Effectively connect primary and secondary research with internal data to uncover unique and actionable insights, partnering with Analytics and Data Science as needed
- Maintain and analyze outputs from our many qualitative, quantitative and secondary research tools (including customer and dealer panels, NPS survey, Brand Tracker, and survey creation tools), using them to best support the business
- Bring creative research techniques that Edmunds can use to get to the next order of insight about its consumers, dealers, and OEMs and identify initiatives based on that research that Edmunds should undertake to create competitive advantage
- Craft compelling executive-level stories with surprising insights to be shared with both the executives and our external partners
- Proactively identify when and how we should build research into our ongoing company processes and product development efforts, partnering with the VP, Corporate Strategy to create repeatable and effective research processes and useful organizational tools
- Act as a thought partner to the executives and business leaders of the company to help provide a strategic research perspective on critical questions
- Bring your experience with other companies and best practices to help Edmunds build a best-in-class research approach and focus
- Keep abreast of new developments, methods, and technologies in research to expand Edmunds' repository of effective techniques
- Inspire innovation by uncovering new problems and opportunities
- Coach and develop more junior Research team members
What You Need:
- Bachelor's degree required, Master's degree or PhD preferred, in field requiring extensive primary and secondary research
- 10+ years' experience in consumer insights, market research, analytics
- Demonstrated ability to dig into results to a detailed level, translate trends, research and opportunities into actionable strategies, and tie research results to tactical recommendations linked to individuals and real-world behavior
- Superior analytical skills
- Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, including comfort presenting to executives
- Courage to stand up for own perspective, even when it may not be the most common opinion
- Entrepreneurial and proactive approach, with desire to shape own role
- Demonstrated ability to work cross-functionally with range of people with different styles, backgrounds and experiences
- Established ability to influence decision makers
- History of strong interpersonal skills and being a team player who quickly builds trust and credibility through relationships
- Demonstrated ability to read the room and individuals and tailor approach to the situation
- Ability to "speak tech", including writing product requirements, understanding site structure, and translating business requirements into design
- Experience directly managing at least one direct report
- Expert in managing projects, research vendors, and clients
- Experience with Qualtrics and Jira required, Tableau preferred
Working @ Edmunds.com:
Employees think it’s a pretty great place to work and some pretty impressive publications think it is too: we have been recognized as one of the best places to work by the Fortune Magazine and Great Places to Work, LA Business Journal (for the last 6 years!), Computerworld, and Built in LA. We've also been identified as one of the best workplaces specifically in Technology and also for Diversity and Asian Americans. In fact, our CEO, Avi Steinlauf, was rated as one of Glassdoor's Highest Rated CEOs! If you’re interested in learning more and joining our mission, we’d love to hear from you!
Edmunds will consider for employment qualified candidates with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of all applicable laws.
*LI-POST