It is a great honour and privilege for me to take over as President from Lutz Hildebrandt. Lutz has served EMAC exceptionally well over the last 10 years, first as National Coordinator for Germany, then as conference chair for the Berlin conference (1999) and more recently as President. I would like to pass on my thanks, and those of all members, to Lutz for his far-sighted leadership. He remains on the Executive Committee as Past President to ensure that the new incumbent does not undo all the good things he has achieved!

EMAC has been at the heart of my professional and academic life for a quarter of a century now. The first conference I attended was at Gröningen (1979 – yes, I am that old) organised and chaired by Peter Leeflang (still active in EMAC and looking ten years younger than me!). Over that time, the EMAC community has given me two things I value above all others.

First, the annual conference has been a forum for discussing exciting new research in marketing. It is a great forum for colleagues to present their ideas and get constructive feedback, as well as to hear about what others are doing and what the latest trends are in research. But EMAC has also provided me the opportunity to network outside my own national marketing community. Over the years I have made many good friends through EMAC. Some of these I’ve gone on to work with (see the MC21 network at www.mc21.org), others it is just good to share a glass or two of wine with while discussing new developments or the football!

It is these two main elements of EMAC that I will be working with the Executive Committee to enhance for all members. The annual conference remains our main opportunity to share and test research ideas. Attendance is increasing rapidly (around 630 attended the excellent conference hosted in Murcia this May by José Luis Munuera and his colleagues). We need to ensure two things however: first that the academic excellence of the conference is maintained; and second that all members have the opportunity to attend so as to build, nurture and maintain their networks. These two can be contradictory objectives, as we have to restrict the presentations at conference to those jumping strict quality hurdles (only around 40% of papers were accepted after review for Murcia). And without a paper acceptance many colleagues cannot get funding from their institutions to attend and network. The solution seems to lie in offering poster sessions and other sessions/events where work that is more developmental in nature can be presented. But the conference is not the only way in which we can share and test ideas. The new teaching portal, developed by Manfred Krafft, offers an excellent facility for sharing teaching ideas and materials.

Opportunities for networking extend beyond EMAC. In October Veronica Wong,  Suzanne Beckmann and Gérard Hermet are planning a joint EMAC/ESOMAR symposium to facilitate networking with marketing research professionals, while the Milan conference next May will see a special one day colloquium in conjunction with colleagues from ‘down under’ in ANZMAC. It is our intention to pursue other possibilities for joint symposia and colloquia over the next few years.

So, my personal slogan for EMAC would be ‘enhancing academic excellence through networking’. I’m looking forward to serving you all as President over the next two years. Please let me have your own ideas and suggestions as to how we can together make EMAC an even more productive academy for all its members.

Graham Hooley (g.j.hooley@aston.ac.uk) June 2004