Philip Kotler is the SC Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, in the United States. He received his master’s degree at the University of Chicago and his PhD at MIT, both in economics. Dr Kotler is author of Marketing Management (Pearson Prentice Hall), now in its 14th edition and the most widely used marketing textbook in graduate schools of business worldwide. He has authored dozens of other successful books and has written more than 100 articles in leading journals. He is the only three-time winner of the coveted Alpha Kappa Psi award for the best annual article in the Journal of Marketing.

Professor Kotler was named the first recipient of two major awards: the Distinguished Marketing Educator of the Year Award given by the American Marketing Association, and the Philip Kotler Award for Excellence in Health Care Marketing presented by the Academy for Health Care Services Marketing. His numerous other major honours include the Sales and Marketing Executives International Marketing Educator of the Year Award; the European Association of Marketing Consultants and Trainers Marketing Excellence Award; the Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Research Award and the Paul D Converse Award, given by the American Marketing Association to honour ‘outstanding contributions to science in marketing’. In a recent Financial Times poll of 1000 senior executives across the world, Professor Kotler was ranked as the fourth ‘most influential business writer/guru’ of the 21st century.

Dr Kotler has served as chairman of the College on Marketing of the Institute of Management Sciences, a director of the American Marketing Association and a trustee of the Marketing Science Institute. He has consulted with many major US and international companies in the areas of marketing strategy and planning, marketing organisation and international marketing. He has travelled and lectured extensively throughout Europe, Asia and South America, advising companies and governments about global marketing practices and opportunities.

Gary Armstrong is Crist W Blackwell Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Undergraduate Education in the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in business from Wayne State University in Detroit, and he received his PhD in marketing from Northwestern University in Illinois. Dr Armstrong has contributed numerous articles to leading business journals. As a consultant and researcher, he has worked with many companies on marketing research, sales management and marketing strategy.

But Professor Armstrong’s first love has always been teaching. His long-held Blackwell Distinguished Professorship is the only permanent endowed professorship for distinguished undergraduate teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has been very active in the teaching and administration of Kenan-Flagler’s undergraduate program. His administrative posts have included Chair of Marketing, Associate Director of the Undergraduate Business Program, Director of the Business Honors Program, and many others.

Through the years, he has worked closely with business student groups and has received several UNC campus-wide and Business School teaching awards. He is the only repeat recipient of the school’s highly regarded Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, which he received three times. Most recently Professor Armstrong received the UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest teaching honour bestowed by the 16-campus University of North Carolina system.