I moved from interpreting the visit to remaining responsible for the proposition built from it.

Mandate

Make the customer occasion and the evidence behind growth claims clear across format, location, channel and category choices.

Outcomes

• Kept the 2021 shared-customer channel finding distinct from an unsupported addition-or-transfer conclusion.
• Narrowed the 2023 location programme to sixty sites for further assessment, with catchment status retained.
• Supported a twenty-site premium-home trial in 2025 without converting the gifting survey share into a sales forecast.

Decisions in context

The CSO appointment brought several forms of growth into one strategic conversation. A new site, an online order and a category trial can each look like an addition while asking different questions about the customer. I work with the relevant owners to explain those questions and the evidence needed for the commitment under consideration. My sixty-four-person function has a defined expense remit, separate from the retailer’s total estate and operating authority. Executive board presentations began with the appointment, and no statutory seat is claimed. The later cases preserve a distinction between activity observed and value inferred: shared customers do not settle incrementality, and a site list does not settle new reach. I want the strategic account to remain useful when the institution asks what the customer can do differently because of the proposed change, rather than relying only on the scale of the programme being described.

Reason for the move

Appointed CSO after responsibility for retail strategy; current role.

Mandate

Clarify which customer tasks each format serves and how differentiated propositions fit a common retail identity.

Outcomes

• Examined 260 compact refill locations and 120 destination stock-up stores in the 2016 format review.
• Supported distinct propositions under one parent brand instead of a uniform-assortment assumption.
• Retained CNY 24 million research and format-design expense without claiming an unmeasured sales effect.

Decisions in context

Retail-strategy responsibility widened my attention from the evidence for one format to the relationship between formats. The common-brand proposal was a useful test because coherence inside the organisation did not automatically translate into clarity for the customer. I wanted compact refill and destination stock-up work described through the visits they served, while preserving the legitimate argument for recognition and consistency. The selected direction retained complexity and required merchandising, brand and operating colleagues to explain where differences mattered. My director title was functional, not a statutory appointment. This role prepared me for the wider CSO remit by making the customer occasion a practical way to connect decisions that different teams could otherwise optimise separately. It also reinforced the need to state historical estate counts at their actual date instead of allowing a later company scale to inflate the scope of an earlier review.

Reason for the move

Promoted to CSO as format choices became more closely connected with channels and network growth.

Mandate

Build a format account whose customer assumptions remain grounded in the period and conditions actually observed.

Outcomes

• Owned the 2009 use of the eight-store pilot’s CNY 96 launch basket as a steady-state basis.
• Withdrew that assumption after the subsequent twelve-week period averaged CNY 61.
• Retained CNY 3.8 million reassessment expense and avoided attributing the entire difference to launch incentives without causal evidence.

Decisions in context

Joining the retailer gave me a continuing relationship with the proposition after its initial research. The pilot mistake showed how easily a promising opening could become an institutional expectation. I had helped make the CNY 96 basket persuasive without giving the launch period and incentives enough weight. Qirong Wen’s challenge required a revision, not a claim that the later lower figure had finally revealed an unquestionable truth. The periods were different, and the evidence did not isolate one cause. I wanted the reassessment to preserve that uncertainty while correcting the basis for expansion. Commercial and operating decisions remained with their owners. This appointment supplied a specific error that later made my category-trial and channel questions more careful. It taught me to explain what an observation supports before allowing the organisation’s enthusiasm for growth to enlarge the inference beyond it.

Reason for the move

Moved into broader retail strategy after nearly seven years in format planning.

Mandate

Translate consumer findings into a proposition assessment while preserving the limits of the research.

Outcomes

• Led work that distinguished reported preference from an observed purchase or repeat behaviour.
• Kept the shopping occasion visible when customer categories were summarised for senior decisions.
• Developed an interest in following research assumptions into the retailer’s continuing format choices.

Decisions in context

As an engagement manager I had to help the team explain a finding clearly without allowing clarity to become overstatement. A client could reasonably ask what the research meant for a commercial choice, but the answer needed to retain the setting in which the behaviour had been observed. I learned to distinguish an implication worth exploring from a result already established. My delivery budget supported the advisory assignment and did not give me authority over the client’s stores or offers. I increasingly wanted to see how the proposition developed after the recommendation and how the assumptions were revised as trading experience accumulated. Moving to Lanverue gave me that continuing responsibility. The advisory work provided habits of interpretation, while the in-house appointment would test whether I could maintain those habits when I shared the institution’s urgency to expand.

Reason for the move

Joined Lanverue to remain accountable for the use of research inside a developing retail network.

Mandate

Interpret consumer evidence with attention to the occasion, observation period and limits of the comparison.

Outcomes

• Learned to separate a customer’s broad category from the task behind a particular visit.
• Prepared research notes that distinguished a stated preference from demonstrated purchase behaviour.
• Developed care around the conditions that must remain attached to an encouraging retail finding.

Decisions in context

My first role followed a commerce degree and centred on the interpretation of consumer research. Working in a small analyst team made me attentive to the way one summary could shape a senior reader’s understanding of a customer. I found the shopping occasion especially useful because it explained why the same person could make different choices without being inconsistent. A quick refill did not ask the retailer for the same experience as a planned larger visit. I also learned that a reported preference and a purchase were different kinds of evidence, even when both sounded positive in a presentation. These habits did not make consumer behaviour predictable. They helped me state more carefully what the available research allowed us to conclude. That foundation became important when later roles required me to challenge an optimistic interpretation I had helped the organisation adopt.

Reason for the move

Promoted to engagement management after building research and client-explanation experience.