Idaho Falls, ID – Category Partners aims to help the perishables industry bolster shopper reach and sales, as the marketplace rapidly evolves, by strengthening the consumer component of its data, insight and research solutions.
Category Partners’ (CP) recent acquisition of produce consumer-research firm, Beacon Research Solutions – and Principal Cara Ammon – positions CP to do just that. Adding to CP’s executive team, Ammon joins as director of research, after nearly two decades of leading research efforts for Beacon Research Solutions and Nielsen’s Perishables Group.
“Bringing Cara onboard is designed to provide greater value to our clients. Cara’s vast consumer-research expertise, coupled with her ability to provide strategic answers to critical consumer questions, allows us to deliver more robust insights to our clientele and the industry,” said Chief Executive Officer Tom Barnes. “CP’s goal is to harness and integrate actionable insights, so our partners can make supply chain inclusive, fact-based decisions that drive their sales and marketing plans. Bringing a research veteran, like Cara, into the company moves Category Partners a huge step further toward achieving our goal.”
Prior to joining Category Partners, Cara worked with a “who’s who” of perishables clients, centered on understanding consumers and the retail channel and delivering strategic recommendations to help companies increase sales. While produce is her primary focus, Ammon also has perspective and experience across numerous verticals, including meat, deli, bakery, seafood and center-store/CPG. She has conducted hundreds of consumer-research projects, ranging from large-scale custom projects to multi-organizational projects – like the recent Barriers to Purchase study – to quick-turn, single-question surveys. More specifically, Ammon’s consumer experience also includes focus groups; syndicated research; in-store testing; loyalty-card data analysis and promotion/pricing analysis.
“I have worked in support of fantastic organizations in the food industry. Joining Category Partners enables me to continue the research work that fuels my passion but at a more intimate and customized level. The data-analytic strengths and deep retail relationships Category Partners brings will help clients receive even more value for their research dollars,” Ammon said. “I have known the CP team for several years, and many team members for more than a decade, and the fit could not be better. I am very excited to work with CP to enhance the capabilities and insights of our industry clients.”
An Indiana native and Indiana University graduate, Cara lives in Chicago, with her husband and their energetic dogs. Cara is a big fan of live music, and you can catch her at venues and festivals enjoying concerts, whenever possible. Cara’s passion is for travel; from trekking through the mountains of Burma, to driving dune-buggies on the Namib Dessert and boating the Okavango River in Botswana. If you need a restaurant recommendation in Istanbul, she’s your woman.
About Category Partners – a nationally recognized resource, among food companies and retailers, for delivering actionable business/consumer insights, marketing/sales plans and technology/data solutions. Category Partners is grower/shipper owned and headquartered in Idaho Falls, ID, with nationwide offices in Laguna Hills, Calif., Denver, Chicago and Atlanta.
Source: Category Partners