Ethan Snyder

About

I am a product strategist and consumer market research leader with more than 18 years of experience. I joined Rivian when the company was still in stealth-mode and built Product Planning and Market Research teams from scratch. My career in automotive also brought me to leadership roles at Nissan and Hyundai/Genesis. The product management and strategy skills I learned in the automotive space to identify and translate customer needs into clear and actionable product development priorities are applicable to most B2C industries. My work encompasses the full product lifecycle and blends intuition with actionable market research (both qual and quant). Here are examples of fundamental questions I would love to help you answer about your business, product, or service. The answers will help drive your strategy and generate long term, sustainable value: 1. Why does your product / service need to exist? From the customer POV what are the alternatives today and in the future? 2. What emotional and/or functional customer needs does your product address? How common are those needs in the marketplace? 3. How do the brand values of your company manifest in the product? How easy is your product to copy? 4. What are optimistic and pessimistic sales volume and market share forecasts for your product in the short, medium, and long term? 5. What is the price elasticity? Is there an opportunity to increase price without reducing volume? What marketing "signals" does your pricing strategy send to your customers? 6. How many and what types of different versions of your product should you offer? Is your offering too complex? What is the expected mix and how can you optimize it to improve profit, volume, and customer experience? 7. What is your roadmap to maintain or increase the competitiveness of your product as it ages? How do you measure product competitiveness? What else is on your mind?

Experience

• Director, Strategic Projects / Corporate Strategy · Hyundai Motor America07-01-2024 – 03-01-2026
• Product Planning and Market Research Leader · Rivian09-01-2018 – 04-01-2024

  Built Product Planning and Market Research functions from scratch.

• Product Planner · Infiniti01-01-2007 – 08-01-2018

  Worked on every vehicle in the portfolio; upstream concept development for Q50 and next generation crossovers, QX80 minor change, quality standards, and special editions.

• Information Management Business Partner · Johnson & Johnson07-01-2000 – 01-01-2007

  Conceived and implemented an enterprise-wide initiative to improve website accessibility; led a global medical affairs effort to automate clinical trial reviews.

Education

• University of Michigan - Stephen M. Ross School of BusinessMaster of Business Administration (MBA)
• Vanderbilt UniversityNissan “TalentUP” Program for High Potential Employees, Executive Education
• Rutgers UniversityBachelor of Science (BS), Business Administration and Management, General

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