Role Purpose
The purpose of the Digital Commerce Merchandise Manager role is to lead and execute online merchandising across pharmaceutical, health and beauty categories, ensuring compliant, customer-centric and commercially optimised product presentation across all digital channels.
The role is responsible for managing the digital merchandising team and end-to-end merchandising workflows to deliver a trusted, intuitive and high-conversion digital shopper journey, with specific focus on regulated products, brand integrity, customer education and category growth within Pharmacy, Beauty, Personal Care and Wellness.
Role Description
- Act as the primary owner and subject matter expert for Digital Merchandising across pharmaceutical, beauty and wellness categories on all digital commerce platforms.
- Ensure all online merchandising adheres to regulatory requirements, internal compliance standards, product claims governance and approved brand guidelines, particularly for OTC, scheduled medicines, medical devices and dermo cosmetic products.
- Manage and critically review campaign briefs received from the external marketing agency (99c) and internal agency (Rainmaker), ensuring briefs are accurate, feasible and compliant with pharmacy and beauty category requirements.
- Proactively liaise with marketing, brand, legal and compliance stakeholders to resolve inaccuracies, claims risks or regulatory gaps prior to execution.
- Quality assures all campaign content, imagery and copy, ensuring accuracy of product information, customer clarity and alignment with approved claims and category standards.
- Provide final merchandising and compliance sign-off prior to campaign go-live.
- Use customer insights, trading data and analytics to determine optimal homepage placements, category positioning, promotional prioritisation and carousel product selection, with specific consideration for pharmacy sensitivity and beauty discovery behaviour.
- Balance commercial objectives with customer trust, education and ease of navigation, particularly for health-related and skin-care decision journeys.
- Analyse and report on campaign and category performance, translating insights into actionable recommendations for commercial, marketing and category teams.
- Continuously identify opportunities to improve digital shelf presentation, navigation, catalogue, filters and product discovery for pharmaceutical and beauty categories.
- Work closely with UX, UI, product and business teams to ensure category-specific requirements are supported, including educational content, product comparisons and trust signals.
- Advise internal and external marketing teams on available digital merchandising components, features and best practices to support effective health and beauty campaigns.
- Use performance insights to advise stakeholders on merchandising strategies that drive category growth, conversion and customer retention within pharmacy and beauty.
- Act as a trusted partner to commercial, marketing and pharmacy stakeholders to ensure digital execution aligns to broader category strategies.
- Manage, coach and develop digital merchandisers to deliver high-quality, compliant and efficient execution across all merchandising activities.
- Identify and champion process improvements to optimise delivery, reduce risk and improve turnaround times.
- Ensure all digital merchandising milestones, campaigns and category initiatives are delivered on time, accurately and to agreed quality standards.
Qualifications and Experience
- Degree or Diploma in Marketing, Business, eCommerce or a related field (essential).
- 4+ years’ experience in digital commerce or online merchandising, with demonstrable experience working in pharmaceutical, beauty, FMCG or regulated retail environments (essential).
- Proven experience supervising or leading an online merchandising or content team (essential).
- Strong retail experience with a deep understanding of the digital shopper journey for pharmacy and beauty customers, including trust, education and brand considerations (essential).
- Tech-savvy with hands-on experience using CMS platforms, digital merchandising tools and analytics to inform merchandising decisions (essential).
- Strong proficiency in Microsoft Office 365 (essential).
Key competencies and work ethic
- Team leadership – Able to lead, motivate and develop team members.
- Team player - Able to work and contribute towards creating a positive team spirit and morale.
- Analytical with strong problem-solving skills - Quickly grasps, organises and evaluates relatively complex data to identify trends/problems and their causes. Generates feasible solutions to achieve goals and develops decision criteria considering relevant factors.
- Accurate and methodical - works in a systematic manner, effectively distributing and delegating tasks to ensure delivery and accuracy and initiates action to correct quality concerns.
- Assertive with good influence - Vocal when issues arise and takes action to resolve concerns. Able to influence stakeholders to an appropriate and specific course of action.
- Flexible thinker - able to think outside the box and apply sound judgement to come up with feasible solutions for improving work performance.
- Customer focused - obsessed about the customer and delivering a digital enriched customer journey experience.
- Accountability - Self-motivated and driven with strong integrity. Takes accountability for actions and mistakes.
- Strong communications skills - able to communicate ideas and suggestions in a logical, convincing and compelling manner. Able to communicate effectively with senior stakeholders.
- Planning and organising - including planning, deadline management and attention to detail. Is highly organised, with a focus on execution, quality and improving processes.
- Output orientated - Drives delivery of outputs on time and to standard within the team. Efficiently manages deliverables in a high-volume environment.
- Build stakeholder rapport - able to build rapport and relationships with key internal and external stakeholders, including leadership teams.
Our Group and all its operating companies is committed to creating, embracing, and preserving a diverse workplace that values the unique talents, perspectives, backgrounds, and abilities that enrich our organisation. A place where everyone matters and feels included.
We are committed to Employment Equity when recruiting internally and externally.
Please take note that by responding to this application and providing your personal information, you confirm your express and informed consent for Shoprite Checkers (Pty) Ltd and all its subsidiaries and affiliates companies to process your personal information for the Company to consider your application for this position. All Personal Information which you provide to the Company will be used and/or retained only for the purposes for which it is collected, whereafter it will be permanently destroyed. Your information is only retained if it is required by law or where you have given consent to us to retain such information for an extended period.
If you don’t hear from us within 14 days, please consider your application unsuccessful. Any personal information collected as part of your application will be destroyed, securely, in accordance with South African legislation.
