I'm Liv, I'm research manager at Harrods.
I actually studied German, so languages.
But the way that that led me into market research was that as part of my degree, I did a year abroad and we had the option to, teach English, to be a student at a university in Germany or to find a work placement.
And so I ended up doing a work placement at a German market research company. It gave me that flavour for it, I enjoyed it.
So then when I left university, I looked for roles in that field. And I ended up doing a graduate scheme with YouGov, which I think most people know in a kind of political kind of polling sense. But actually run a lot of consumer research on anything.
So you could be doing surveys from kind of cat food to, you know, your opinion on, you know, the environment, anything like that.
And that was really broad. You know, it was kind of polling anyone about anything which gave me a really good insight into how people think about a really wide range of things.
And then from that point, I found this role at Harrods. So doing that same kind of consumer research, but just for one company and for a very specific set of kind of people.
Along the way I've also done a lot of shop floor roles. I've worked as a sales associate at lots of different kind of clothing brands over the years from about the age of 16.
So I've had that retail experience from the other side of things. Where I'm in head office now, I've been on the shop floor, spoken to customers face to face, which has been really insightful for doing this role.
And I actually did work at Harrods on the shop floor, and it really gave me a flavour for the kinds of people who shop here. What the experience of shopping here is like.
I really enjoyed it. So it felt very full circle to come back here, as a research manager, talking to those customers, but in kind of a very different way than when I was on the shop floor.
