Below is a summary of our interview with Seth Nieman. You can listen to the full interview using the embedded media player below or on your favorite podcast platform (e.g., Apple Podcasts or Spotify).
In this episode of Pricing Heroes, we sit down with Seth Nieman, former Vice President of Pricing Strategy & Transformation at Rite Aid and longtime pricing and merchandising leader at Lidl US and Wakefern Food Corp. With a career that spans procurement, assortment, forecasting, and price optimization, Seth shares how he implemented pricing strategy at scale across three very different retail formats — discounters, supermarkets, and pharmacies — and how pricing leaders can navigate complexity, organizational silos, and financial constraints without losing sight of the customer.
We explore how pricing can become the conscience of the organization, how to weigh competing priorities across functions, and what it takes to lead transformation under extreme pressure — from U.S. market entry to post-bankruptcy recovery.
From Lidl to Wakefern: Building price into the product lifecycle
Seth began his career at Lidl US before the first store had opened. In those early years, his role spanned the full product lifecycle: shadowing buyers in Europe, developing private-label assortments, and setting entry prices for the U.S. market. “We knew pricing was one of the most important parts of Lidl’s value proposition,” he says, “and it became a passion from the very start.”
That passion carried over to Wakefern, where Seth helped launch new private labels — Bowl & Basket and Paperbird — and negotiated cost reductions that enabled investment in price and promotion. By embedding pricing into vendor partnerships and brand architecture, he delivered over 100% growth in key SKUs.
He was later promoted to oversee marketing and sales planning across the entire enterprise, where he launched price-led campaigns like “Don’t Miss Deals” and “Locked In Price,” then returned to pricing as VP of Merchandising Support. There, he scaled pricing optimization tools across banners and helped make pricing a strategic pillar of the organization.
Driving change across functions: Why pricing is the conscience of the business
Seth’s leadership spans roles in category management, marketing, and forecasting — perspectives that helped shape his approach to pricing. “Category managers often have different goals than pricing,” he explains. “Our job is to bring them insight and make their job easier, while ensuring we do the right thing for the customer.”
He describes pricing as the conscience of the business: balancing short-term tradeoffs with long-term trust. That requires careful negotiation. “If I’m asking to invest in one category, I need to find offsets elsewhere — and work with leadership to shield that category manager from performance hits.”
It’s a collaborative model, not a prescriptive one. By tailoring recommendations to each function’s goals and reframing data in commercial terms, Seth builds alignment and empowers cross-functional teams to act strategically, not reactively.
Three formats, three strategies: Adapting pricing to fit the model
Across Lidl, Wakefern, and Rite Aid, Seth worked in three radically different models: EDLP, hi/lo, and convenience pharmacy. Each one demanded a different approach.
At Lidl, extreme competitiveness on base price was essential. At Wakefern, promotion drove traffic — but everyday pricing had to improve to keep pace with inflation. At Rite Aid, where convenience justified higher prices, he had to draw the line carefully. “If you break the value equation,” he warns, “the customer will change their behavior. That’s when you lose them.”
The common thread: a focus on value perception. Whether leading U.S. expansion or working through a multi-brand transformation, Seth used loyalty data, competitor mapping, and category segmentation to ensure pricing reflected both trip mission and customer expectation.
Architecture, alignment, and accountability: Implementing tiered strategy at scale
At Wakefern, Seth partnered with dunnhumby to analyze RPI and uncover weak spots in base price perception. His team responded with a KVI-based architecture that segmented items by customer relevance and promotional role. High-visibility items were priced to compete; long-tail SKUs had looser guardrails.
Each decision was backed by loyalty card data and merchant input. “We didn’t just lower prices,” he explains. “We invested strategically — and used promotion and pack design to reinforce that investment.”
The result was a measurable increase in both customer perception and CPI competitiveness, while protecting margin through discipline and control. That success laid the groundwork for a more localized strategy across 60+ ShopRite stores, where Seth created pricing clusters based on store format, ownership, and profitability goals.
Leading through crisis: Pricing transformation during bankruptcy at Rite Aid
In 2023, Seth joined Rite Aid during its emergence from bankruptcy. Despite intense financial constraints, he led a top-to-bottom reset of the pricing organization — refining optimization rules, rebuilding KVI segmentation, and introducing category roles to distinguish core, convenience, and destination SKUs.
He also onboarded a new competitive intelligence partner and helped establish performance guardrails tied to assortment, region, and category role.
“Obviously, we couldn’t make sweeping changes,” he says. “But even within those limits, we found ways to invest where it mattered — on items with the highest impact to customer trust.” He credits the team for helping Rite Aid complete its first successful emergence from bankruptcy.
Retail’s next frontier: Dynamic pricing, ESLs, and AI-enabled optimization
Looking ahead, Seth sees dynamic pricing and personalization as hot-button issues — with the biggest challenge being transparency. “The customer needs to know why the price changed. And lawmakers are asking the same questions.”
He’s skeptical of real-time, POS-level pricing shifts in physical stores but sees promise in personalized offers through loyalty programs. “We’re already seeing it — digital coupons, targeted promotions. It’s just smart segmentation.”
On the tech front, he champions tools that combine optimization, intelligence, and collaboration across systems — from supply chain to finance to space planning. “The key is integration,” he says. “AI isn’t replacing anyone — it’s helping teams focus on strategy and impact.”
Tools are only part of the picture. For Seth, leadership means translating technical data into decisions. “Great pricing leaders have to be both technical and commercial,” he says. “That’s how you get buy-in, drive change, and earn a seat at the table.”
Recommended resources
Seth encourages pricing professionals to stay immersed in industry trends and competitor activity:
- Retail Dive, Drug Store News, Progressive Grocer, and Supermarket News
- Earnings reports and investor presentations
- The annual NRF conference to track technology roadmaps
- A healthy mix of publications across viewpoints — “I’m partial to the Wall Street Journal, but I always read widely.”
