Biographical note

Philip Kotler is one of the world's leading authorities on marketing, He is the S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of international Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He received his master's degree at the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. at MIT, both in economics. He did postdoctoral work in mathematics at Harvard University and in behavioural science at the University of Chicago.

Besides authoring a large number of publications and articles in various journals, professor Kotler has been a consultant to many major US and foreign companies, including IBM, General Electric, AT&T, Honeywell, Bank of America, Merck, SAS Airlines, Michelin and others in the areas of marketing strategy and planning, marketing organisation and international marketing.

Kevin Lane Keller is the E, B. Osborn Professor of Marketing at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, USA. Professor Keller has degrees from Cornell, Carnegie-Mellon and Duke universities. At Dartmouth, he teaches MBA courses-on marketing management and strategic brand management and lectures in executive programmes on those topics.

Professor Keller' general area of expertise lies in marketing strategy and planning and branding. His specific research interest is in how understanding theories and concepts related to consumer behaviour can improve marketing and branding strategies. His research has been published in three of the major marketing journals; the journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research and the Journal of Consumer Research, He also has served on the Editorial Review Boards of those journals. With over 120 published papers, his research has been widely cited and has received numerous awards.

Mairead Brady is an assistant Professor of Marketing at the Trinity School of Business, Trinity College Dublin. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, which she completed under the supervision of Professors Michael Saren and Nikolas Tzokas.

Dr Brady's research focuses on the assimilation and management of digital technologies in marketing. She concentrates on analysing the challenges of contemporary marketing practice with papers and research work in the area of digital challenges, social networking realities and myths, and how real-time data affects business. She is also the academic lead on the Pearson MyMarketingExperience game-based learning, which is an online simulation designed to engage students in the writing of a marketing plan. With more than 90 publications, including journal articles and international conference papers and presentations, Dr Brady is a prolific author.

Malcolm Robert Victor Goodman has retired from full-time teaching and is actively engaged in AJM Management Development, a partnership specialising in the practical application of marketing, creativity, change management and strategic innovation initiatives. He is also Visiting Associate of Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam University. His specialist subjects are business creativity, organisational change and marketing.

Professor Goodman has worked on several international assignments and has conducted on-the-spot marketing surveys and management briefs in Europe (particularly France and Germany) and in the Far East (especially Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand).

Torben Hansen is a Professor at the Department of Marketing, Copenhagen Business School (CB5) His main fields of research are consumer behaviour and marketing research methods, and his papers have appeared in various academic journals. He has also contributed a number of chapters in scholarly books. He is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences and community forums.

Professor Hansen is editor in chief of the Consumer Behaviour Newsletter at Copenhagen Business School. He has served as a member of the Danish Food Think Tank and a member of the Danish Marketing Practices Act Committee.