Alumnus testimonial
Kayleigh Meister - Analytical Team Lead
The consumer behavior element that was present in my masters is now still present in my job.
I studied MME with a specialisation in consumer studies. I did my bachelors at the Hotel Management School in Maastricht and my masters at WUR. During my time in Maastricht I spoke to some former students who also went to Wageningen to do their masters and got enthusiastic about MME and WUR.
Since you graduated, what kind of jobs did you have?
Since I graduated I stayed working for NielsenIQ.. I did my internship (part
of the MME program) at NielsenIQ as the internship coordinator (Frans Verhees)
had the idea NielsenIQ and me would be a good fit. This turned out to be true. I enjoyed my internship so much that I stayed and started as a Junior consultant in the Sales effectiveness team. After a while I got promoted to consultant and over time I made the switch from the analytical team to the sales team, still in the sales effectiveness department.
After 3,5 years in the Sales Effectiveness team I joined the Retailer Service team as a senior consultant. In this team I am in daily contact with the retailers in The Netherlands we work with.
For the past 2,5 years I worked as a Client Business Partner in the retailer team and as of January I changed from sales back to analytics again and currently I’m leading the analytical team for retailers in The Netherlands.
What is your current job? And how relates that to your study at Wageningen?
My current job is Analytical Team lead in the retailer department. At NielsenIQ we analyse a lot of data and see what is happening in the market. We see trends in sales that are a result of changing consumer behavior. Think about the increase in sales of meat replacements for example. We monitor these sales on a weekly basis. Also a lot of interesting trends became visible during Covid, consumer behavior is changing and thus sales are changing.
Next to the consumer behavior element that was present in my masters and is now still present in my job I also felt the knowledge gained about marketing analytics was very relevant. In the Sales effectiveness department where I started my job (and internship) I’ve worked with a lot of different advanced models NielsenIQ has available.