Reputation, Responsibility and Relevance - Otago Attracts Marketing Gurus to ANZMAC Conference

A large group of international marketing experts and researchers will gather in Dunedin next week for the Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC) conference.

Hosted by the Department of Marketing at the University of Otago's School of Business the 9th ANZMAC conference has attracted around 450 people from 25 countries.

The conference theme '3Rs – Reputation, Responsibility and Relevance' will bring into focus a range of topics, from the relevance of marketing within the modern organisations, to the whole area of ethics and social responsibility. There will be 10 Special Sessions ranging from 'Cultural Identity' through to 'Alcohol Consumption' and 'Restructuring of Global Value Chain Systems'.

These will be offered alongside 440 academic papers presented in 20 different tracks ranging from 'Entrepreneurship, Innovation and New Product Development' to 'Retailing' and 'Electronic Marketing' and just about everything in-between. It is the largest number of papers presented at an ANZMAC conference since the fist one was held at Otago in 1998.

The Keynote speaker for the conference is Professor Suzanne Beckmann who is Professor of International Strategic Management at the Department of Intercultural Communication and Management, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.

Professor Beckmann has a wealth of knowledge in the broad 3Rs theme and is well known and respected around the world. Her keen interest in corporate social responsibility has grown out of her extensive research in the areas of consumer behaviour, marketing strategy, corporate communications, cross-cultural marketing and environmental issues.

Dr Ken Deans, Conference Chair and Head of the Department, says they are delighted to have speakers of the calibre of Professor Beckmann.

"Added to that, we have a number of other leaders in their fields speaking at this conference. When you combine that with Otago's excellent reputation this may go some way to explain the strong demand for places at this conference," he says.

"I think the conference theme has also helped generate even interest. Business, and more importantly marketing, understands the need to be more socially responsible and relevant. That is going to make for some lively debate and exchange of ideas."

The three-day conference will run from Monday 3 December until Wednesday 5 December in the St. David's Centre and Commerce Building. It will be preceded by a two-day doctoral colloquium over the weekend.