Insight Session
Reinventing Category Management: The Next Generation Powered by AI
San Diego Convention Center, Room 5
Reinventing Category Management: The Next Generation Powered by AI
Category Management is at a crossroads. Traditional tools and processes, designed decades ago, can no longer keep pace with today’s consumer complexity, competitive intensity, and demand for personalization. In this provocative session, Dr. Brian Harris, the original architect of Category Management, shares how the discipline is being reinvented for the modern retail landscape.
He will introduce a new AI-powered model that advances the original 8-step framework by integrating deep consumer behavior insights, AI-driven segmentation, and predictive analytics. This approach moves beyond tactical improvements and enables strategic Joint Business Planning grounded in quantified opportunity, lifestyle-based segmentation, and seamless execution across pricing, assortment, and retail media.
Attendees will learn how to:
- Identify the Most Valuable Segments (MVS) using consumer and shopper data integration
- Turn insight into action across the full path to purchase
- Leverage the new process and AI to accelerate strategic collaboration and unlock double-digit category growth for both retailers and manufacturers.
Dr. Harris will demonstrate how this Next Generation Category Management model is already transforming outcomes for retailers and manufacturers, offering a practical, scalable blueprint for future growth.
Julie Beck
Chief Customer Officer
Intent AI
Leading an award-winning career at P&G, J&J, Kraft and Treehouse Foods, Julie has spent over 35 years delivering double-digit growth for brands, including private label, through strategic Category Management and strong retailer partnerships across all classes of trade, food, drug, mass, club, ecommerce, and foodservice channels. Julie's desire to impact the next generation of Category Management and restart growth in the industry has led her to take on her new role as CCO for Intent AI, working side by side with Dr. Brian Harris and the rest of the global team of industry veterans.
Dr. Brian Harris
President & CEO
Intent AI
Dr. Harris pioneered the concept of Category Management in the late 1980s. Since then, he’s been an ambassador and thought leader teaching the benefits of Category Management to hundreds of retailers and manufacturers across the globe.