It is with great sadness that we report the death of Professor Peter Doyle. Peter died on 30th March after a long fight  with cancer. Peter Doyle was one of the founding members of EMAC (then known as the European Academy for Advanced Research in Marketing) in the early 1970s. He was the first UK representative on the Executive and along with colleagues such as Susan Douglas, Lars-Gunnar Mattsson, Peter Leeflang and Philip Naert helped to put Marketing on the European map. Peter graduated with a First in Economics from the University of Manchester, UK, in 1965 and worked for a time as an economist at Unilever’s head office in London. He then took an MBA and PhD from Carnegie-Mellon in the USA and began his outstanding academic career with appointments at London Business School, INSEAD, Stanford, Bradford and more recently Warwick Business School. A prolific author, Peter’s papers appeared in all the leading Marketing journals and won prizes for their contributions at conferences such as AMA, AM and EMAC. He was also very highly regarded amongst marketing professionals, acting as consultant to leading organisations such as Coca-Cola, Cadbury Schweppes, Unilever, Shell, Hewlett-Packard, Ogilvy & Mather and the British Government’s Cabinet Office. His latest book, Value Based Marketing: Marketing strategies for corporate growth and shareholder value, was described by Philip Kotler as ‘path breaking’ and ‘destined to spark a revolution in marketing’. The book explored in detail the interface between marketing and financial performance so central to Peter’s work with the boards of leading organizations. Peter will be sadly missed by all who knew him, and particularly by those of us who had the privilege to work closely with him and to learn from him.

Graham Hooley, Aston Business School, 2nd April 2003

Cardiff Business School’s Marketing and Strategy Section continue their development of the section with a view to launching a new MSc in Strategic Marketing to begin in September 2004. As part of this advancement the section offers its congratulations to three of its staff recently awarded lectureship positions within the School.

Dr David Stiles, who is deputy co-ordinator of the MBA programme and lectures in Strategic Management at MBA level as well as Marketing at undergraduate level. His current research considers strategy making and implementation in higher education in the UK and North America; strategic management in the arts and tourism industries; the impact of downsizing and strategic management in the police (with Annette Davies and Sam Hardy, Cardiff University) as well as joint ventures and foreign direct investment in China.

Dr Matthew Robson already teaches strategic management at both MBA and undergraduate level. His research interests include the importance of partner-related partner selection criteria in UK strategic alliances (with M. Beynon, Cardiff Business School); the determinants of trust and performance in UK strategic alliances (Ph.D. thesis) along with considering issues in and future directions for empirical IJV study (with Robert E. Morgan, University of Wales Aberystwyth).

And also, Dr Tony Ellson who has brought to Cardiff a wealth of international industrial and consultancy experience and undertakes MBA and undergraduate marketing teaching. His research areas include positioning and culture as a determinant of strategy; phenomenological and ethnographic research methods, the role of Higher Education in the business environment and elitism, "cultural pedagogy", "scientific method", and "truth" and the business practitioner.

Three new members of staff have joined the Marketing Group at the University of Salford, UK. Fiona Cheetham’s interests are consumer behaviour and consumption – particularly with regard to collecting – and ethnography. She believes a contribution to consumer behaviour theory can be made by drawing on ideas generated in the fields of material culture and ‘process’ sociology and is currently researching the actor networks of collecting and consumption. Morven Mc Eachern’s interests also lie in Consumer Behaviour, in addition to Marketing Communications, Social Marketing and Retail Marketing. She is currently applying a modelling approach to researching Quality Assured Labelling Schemes, with specific reference to Rural and Urban Purchasing Behaviour. Finally, Richard Pearce’s interests include cultural/social dimensions to (international) marketing communications, marketing ethics and the sociology of consumption. He favours qualitative/interpretative/critical methodologies, especially discourse analysis and is currently employing discourse analysis to evaluate ethical issues in environmental advertising.

Cardiff Business School’s Marketing and Strategy Section has recently welcomed several new members of staff in enhancing its teaching and research portfolio. Dr Eleri Thorpe joined the section in September 2002 after completing her PhD at the University of Wales Aberystwyth. Her areas of research centre on strategy implementation and mid-level management. A more recent addition is Dr Sheena Leek, previously of the University of Birmingham who joined the section in January 2003 and specialises in areas of consumer behaviour and business to business marketing. The Section also welcomes Dr Marie Mirella Yani de Soriano from the Universidad de Los Andes in Venezuela with a PhD from Keele University, whose research interests span consumer behaviour, market research and cross cultural marketing.

The Marketing and Strategy section has also initiated a scheme of visiting fellows to the School in the interests of sharing ideas and research collaboration. The Section is already pleased to welcome a number of leading professors. Greg Allenby holds the Helen C Kurtz Chair in Marketing at the Fisher School of Business, Ohio State University. Professor Allenby will be visiting the School for a short period in May to exchange ideas and to collaborate on research. He specialises in the study of economic and statistical issues in marketing. His research deals with developing new insights about consumer behaviour from customer data routinely collected by most organisations.

The second visitor to Cardiff is Marc Weinberger, Associate Dean and Professor of Marketing at the Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts. Professor Weinberger arrived in Cardiff in January and will be participating and interacting with the faculty and students until March. He specialises in the areas of corporate brand values and corporate publicity and is currently working on research dealing with negative communication and effects on the marketplace, market share, brand value and company valuation.

The School has also welcomed Professor Jorge Oliveira-Castro from the University of Brasilia this year who will spend his sabbatical, thanks to a fellowship from the Ministry of Education of Brazil, collaborating with the Consumer Behaviour Analysis Research Group, led by Professor Gordon Foxall. This collaboration has already produced some publications and will generate several others, among which a monograph in the Journal of Consumer Behaviour and a book on Brand Choice.

Previous visitors have included Ruth Bolton, Professor of Management (Marketing) at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee and Richard Bagozzi, J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Management, Marketing, Behavioural Science and Psychology at Rice University, Texas. Also, Jan Heide, Professor of Marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business and Christine Moorman, Professor of Marketing, Fuqua School of Business Duke University, North Carolina.

Cardiff Business School’s Marketing and Strategy Section would welcome future visits from other leading US academics, whether passing through or as part of a longer visit to the UK. For further information please contact Dr. John Pallister, Head of Marketing and Strategy Section, Cardiff Business School, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU, Wales, UK. Telephone: +44 (0)29 2087 508; fax: +44 (0)29 2087 4419; email: pallisterjg@cardiff.ac.uk

Professor Peter Hamman from the University of Bochum, one of the founding members and a former President of EMAC had his 65th birthday at the beginning of April. Congratulations !