Merch Planner

**About us**:
As a Fortune 50 company with more than 400,000 team members worldwide, Target is an iconic brand and one of America's leading retailers. At Target, we have a timeless purpose and a proven strategy and that hasn’t happened by accident. Some of the best minds from diverse backgrounds come together at Target to redefine retail in an inclusive learning environment that values people and delivers world-class outcomes. That winning formula is especially apparent in Bengaluru, where Target in India operates as a fully integrated part of Target’s global team and has more than 4,000 team members supporting the company’s global strategy and operations.

Joining Target means promoting a culture of mutual care and respect and striving to make the most meaningful and positive impact. Becoming a Target team member means joining a community that values diverse backgrounds. We believe your unique perspective is important, and you'll build relationships by being authentic and respectful. At Target, inclusion is part of the core value. We aim to create equitable experiences for all, regardless of their dimensions of difference. As an equal opportunity employer, Target provides diverse opportunities for everyone to grow and win.

Target Merchandising is evolving at an incredible pace. We are constantly reimagining how this $100 billion retailer offers the innovative, guest-inspiring items that Target is known and loved for. Our goal is to deliver exceptional value, quality and style to elevate Target as the premier retailer in a competitive global marketplace. Through intelligent and progressive business strategies that make the most of Target’s resources and partnerships worldwide, merchandising works across product categories to create a localized shopping experience online and in our 1900 stores. Are you a creative problem solver who loves to see your work translate into real results? Can you collaborate effectively, execute a plan efficiently and positively influence how Target chooses and presents the right product in the right place at the right price? If so, you will have success on one of our dynamic teams.

A role in **Planning** means being in charge of the financials and forecasting for one of Target’s businesses. Here, you’ll conduct comparative analysis of holiday or other seasonal performance reports and provide the insights that inform the Inventory team’s work to ensure that product supports projected sales. Acting as the hub between Merchandising and Supply Chain, you will create a financial link between these two essential groups and have a voice in some of the most important decisions from a financial strategy standpoint.

As a Merchandise Planner, you’ll provide in-season decision support, collaborate on assortment planning, recommend localization and channel strategies including cluster types and profiles, and lead demand forecasting. You’ll support the divisional strategy through your category expertise and partnerships with cross-functional teams and vendors. You will head up the open-to-buy process and decide on category-level investment and the financial validity of assortments. You will conduct root cause analysis for variation between supply and demand forecasts to support “chase-cancel” decisions and communicate implications to vendors. You’ll conduct scenario planning, build unit plans, and lead initial set planning and operationalization to optimize assortments. A large part of your role will be to interpret forecast results and conduct “what if?” analysis to guide your go-forward recommendations. You will validate the unit promo planning forecast, drive maintenance, risk analysis and decision-making by the Pricing & Promotion Center of Excellence. Previous experience in planning/ FP&A (in retail) & inventory management. And you’ll run event forecast creation and flow, analyzing item lifecycles and driving recommendations on end-of-season management.

Core responsibilities are described within this job description. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs.

**About you**:

- Three/Four-year degree or MBA (Operations)or CA(partial / completed)
- 5- 8years of relevant experience.
- 2+ years of merchandising experience.
- Strong verbal and communication skills, strategic, financial, and analytical skills; can easily translate data from an array of sources into insights and recommendations
- Strong collaboration skills to partner with cross-functional teams
- Flexible, resilient and comfortable working in “grey areas” that are constantly changing
- Proficiency with excel and VBA.
- Work experience with SQL for data extraction.
- Working experience with Python Or R is good to have.

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