Marketing: An Introduction, Canadian Edition, 7th edition

About our authors

Gary Armstrong is Crist W. Blackwell Distinguished Professor Emeritus 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. 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 campuswide 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 3 times. Most recently, Professor Armstrong received the UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest teaching honor bestowed by the 16-campus University of North Carolina system.

Philip Kotler is Professor Emeritus of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He received his master's degree at the University of Chicago and his PhD at M.I.T., both in economics. Dr. Kotler is the co-author of Marketing Management (Pearson), now in its 16th edition and the most widely used marketing textbook in graduate schools of business worldwide. He has authored more than 60 other successful books and has published more than 150 articles in leading journals. He is the only 3-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 4 major awards: the Distinguished Marketing Educator of the Year Award and the William L. Wilkie "Marketing for a Better World" Award, both given by the American Marketing Association; the Philip Kotler Award for Excellence in Health Care Marketing presented by the Academy for Health Care Services Marketing; and the Sheth Foundation Medal for Exceptional Contribution to Marketing Scholarship and Practice. He is a charter member of the Marketing Hall of Fame, was voted the first Leader in Marketing Thought by the American Marketing Association, and was named the Founder of Modern Marketing Management in the Handbook of Management Thinking. His numerous other major honors 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 honor "outstanding contributions to science in marketing." A recent Forbes survey ranks Professor Kotler in the top 10 of the world's most influential business thinkers. And in a recent Financial Times poll of 1,000 senior executives across the world, Professor Kotler was ranked as the fourth "most influential business writer/guru" of the 21st century. He is considered by many to be the "father of modern marketing."

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 organization, and international marketing. He has traveled and lectured extensively throughout Europe, Asia, and South America, advising companies and governments about global marketing practices and opportunities.

Valerie Trifts is a professor of marketing at Dalhousie University, Rowe School of Business, in Halifax. She received her undergraduate business degree from the University of Prince Edward Island, her MBA from Saint Mary's University, and her Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Alberta. Her research spans a broad range of topics, but her primary research interests are in the area of consumer information search and decision making. Specifically, she is interested in how firms can benefit from strategically providing their customers with information about competitors, as well as in exploring individual difference variables that influence search behaviour. More recently, she has begun to explore how personalization technologies can be leveraged online to customize digital media products for individual consumers. She has taught a wide variety of courses, including introduction to marketing, consumer behaviour, marketing research, internet marketing, global marketing, integrated marketing communications, and business in emerging markets at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Her research has been published in several journals, including Marketing Science, the Journal of Consumer Psychology, the Journal of Business Research, and Psychology & Marketing. She has presented at numerous academic conferences and has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Eric Dolansky is an associate professor of marketing at Goodman School of Business, Brock University. His area of research is in consumer behaviour, and he has published articles and award-winning business cases on pricing, behavioural economics, and consumer perceptions. Dr. Dolansky strongly believes in an engaging, interactive classroom, with contributions not only from the instructor but from the participants. For this reason, his classes often employ case analysis and discussion, role playing, discussion/ debate, and interactive activities to advance the learning and understanding of the concepts. He has served as coach for many student competitions and has run seminars on presentation skills. Dr. Dolansky is heavily involved in case learning and teaching, having chaired the case division of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada, and has served as President of the North American Case Research Association and Associate Editor of the Case Research Journal. Dr. Dolansky received a B.A. in film from Ryerson University, and his MBA and Ph.D. from the Ivey School of Business at Western University. He is also a two-time Jeopardy! champion.