Director, Consumer Intelligence

Description

Overview:

The APAC Consumer Intelligence Director is a strategic leader responsible for driving consumer insight and market intelligence across Asia-Pacific (with emphasis on Japan, Korea and China). Serving as the link between global strategy and regional execution, this role ensures category and brand initiatives are grounded in local consumer realities. The Director converts complex data into actionable opportunities for category, brand and business growth—especially in the fast-moving skincare segment. Working in a high-pressure, ambiguous environment, the successful candidate will be proactive, take strong ownership, and align diverse stakeholders around shared objectives.

Key Responsibilities:

You will oversee a comprehensive portfolio of research initiatives, ranging from high-level global foresight to granular regional brand studies. You will bring a balance of strategic vision and tactical execution to address pressing business questions through data-driven insights.

• Strategic Project Leadership: Lead and support global and regional skincare and makeup projects, including category A&U, opportunity-space deep dives, cultural trends, and consumer profiling etc.


• Insight Synthesis: Transform disparate data sources — including existing studies and cross-market learnings, consumer panels, social listening, and secondary data — into cohesive category insights and strategic opportunities.


• Foresight & Innovation: Lead and support category foresight to identify APAC market and category signals, emerging trends, white spaces, and anticipated consumer and market shifts.


• Regional Brand Research & Insights: Direct category- and brand-specific qualitative and quantitative research programs to support regional brand growth, including concept testing, pricing research, packaging testing, customer-journey mapping, and creative testing.


• Voice of Consumers: Cultivate an insight-led decision-making culture by managing research rigor and ensuring the voice of APAC consumers is integrated at every stage of global category and brand development, from concept to market expansion.


• Vendor Management: Own and manage relationships with third-party market research vendors, ensuring quality, timeliness, and budget adherence.


• Teamwork & Stakeholder Collaboration: Build trusting relationships with regional and global stakeholders (marketing, brand teams, CI leads); mentor junior CI team members to drive high performance and ensure effective cross-functional collaboration.

Qualifications

Key Requirements:

• Experience: 10+ years in beauty market insights, consumer research or competitive intelligence with increasing responsibility; proven track record leading regional (APAC) projects and working across key markets such as China, Japan and Korea.


• Data & analytics expertise: Advanced skills in both quantitative and qualitative methods, with strong command of data and insights synthesis. Comfortable interpreting complex signals from diverse sources (social listening, consumer panels, ad-hoc surveys, AI search, etc.).


• Storytelling & communication: Able to translate business needs into a clear framework and distill complex data into concise, compelling narratives that influence decisions at all levels.


• Proactivity & comfort with ambiguity: Self-motivated leader who excels in fast-paced, evolving environments; maintains momentum and provides clear direction even when information is incomplete.


• Stakeholder alignment & accountability: Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to align diverse stakeholders (global category leads, regional brands/marketing ), manage competing priorities, build consensus through evidence-based persuasion, and deliver projects reliably.


• Language skills: Professional fluency in English required; additional proficiency in Korean or Japanese preferred; Chinese is a plus.