How To Become A Retail Product Manager: What It Is and Career Path

What is a retail product manager and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Sachin Tuli

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a retail product manager. For example, did you know that they make an average of $39.58 an hour? That's $82,334 a year! Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 10% and produce 33,700 job opportunities across the U.S.

What's a day at work look like for a retail product manager?

Sachin Tuli

Director, International Business Major, Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The pandemic accelerated ongoing shifts with work-from-anywhere and use of remote meeting technologies. With mass adoption at all levels, these trends are likely to persist to some degree across fields and industries. There will likely be less travel for a number of years, but concurrently we may see more cross-team and cross-national collaboration and coordination. From an international business perspective, firms do plan to continue their globalization efforts and we know that graduates themselves increasingly seek potential global opportunities and mobility when choosing which organizations to work for.

ScoreRetail Product ManagerUS Average

Salary

6.4

Avg. Salary $82,334

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.5

Growth rate 10%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.1

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.23%

Asian 8.15%

Black or African American 3.04%

Hispanic or Latino 8.67%

Unknown 5.32%

White 74.58%

Gender

female 50.40%

male 49.60%

Age - 38

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 38

Stress level

7.5

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

9.0

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

3.5

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a retail product manager

Explore retail product manager education requirements

Most common retail product manager degrees

Bachelor's

68.4 %

Master's

14.5 %

Associate

10.5 %

Start to develop specific retail product manager skills

Skills	Percentages
Digital Marketing	25.37%
Product Management	13.73%
PowerPoint	12.15%
Product Development	7.43%
Product Lifecycle	4.77%

Complete relevant retail product manager training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-3 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New retail product managers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a retail product manager based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real retail product manager resumes.

Research retail product manager duties and responsibilities

Hire and task several industry experts to define customer requirements; manage collection and prioritization of customer requirements and overall VOC.
Lead cross-functional team in pioneering the application/game download ecosystem with the implementation of Java games and generating significant new revenue stream.
Develop and implement PowerPoint and Webinar sales training for all products.
Utilize SQL to support data-driven analysis and decision processes to inform project prioritization, assess feature effectiveness, and troubleshoot issues.

Apply for retail product manager jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a retail product manager job. Consider the tips below for a successful job search:

Browse job boards for relevant postings
Consult your professional network
Reach out to companies you're interested in working for directly
Watch out for job scams

How do retail product managers rate their job?

-/5

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Retail product manager reviews

A zippia user wrote a review on Aug 2023

Cons

high expectations, constantly evolving technology, broad range of topics to learn (product management specifics, industry, technology, software development methods

Pros

Solve tough problems, work on agile teams, outlet for creativity,