Suzanne Cheves

Suzanne has been on the cutting edge of Shopper Insights since this exciting new way of thinking about consumer decision-making first emerged. Suzanne was in on the ground floor of Procter & Gamble's initial efforts to understand consumers' retail experiences by turning their attention to what they call the first consumer "moment of truth," when a shopper encounters the reality of a product on the shelf.  

Most recently, Suzanne was a leader at Clorox responsible for developing the Shopper Marketing and Shopper Insights capabilities for the company. She led a team tasked with developing Clorox's corporate capability to understand and influence shopper behavior at key retail customers, including Wal-Mart, Target and all major grocery chains.  

Suzanne taps into this great depth and breadth of experience to lead our Shopping Inquiry practice at Brandtrust. Shopping Inquiry is our form of deep qualitative, contextual and emotional research to understand shopping behavior along all steps of the purchasing journey. Shopping Inquiry builds from our successful consumer behavior methodologies, drawing on advances in the social sciences to uncover both what is really going on in consumers' shopping behavior and why it's happening. 

Of working at Brandtrust, Suzanne says, "Brandtrust understands that consumers in shopping mode are operating in a different context, so we've developed approaches that uncover their needs as they relate specifically to the retail environment, without priming respondents to give us the answers they think we want. The shopping insights we reveal for our clients enable them to partner with retailers to grow their categories and confer competitive advantages on their brands at the point of purchase."

Suzanne lives in San Francisco and is passionate about taking advantage of everything the area has to offer, from skiing in Tahoe to wine tasting in the Napa Valley and hiking the hills around the bay. She is also passionate about the performing arts, serving on the Board of Directors of the Oakland Ballet Company. As is true of just about any native Californian, her pet peeve is bad drivers. If you ever have the chance to talk with her socially (over a glass of California wine), ask her about being a member of the Steel Workers' Union when she was eighteen.