Reflections of Eminent Marketing Scholars

Reflections of Eminent Marketing Scholars is a collection of essays solicited from eminent and pioneering marketing scholars. This collection of their thoughts is an inspiration for all of us in the field. Marketing is a field of some truly excellent scholars and we are beginning to see a number of these people retire. These remarkable people have been not just the leaders in the field but in many cases, the very pioneers in creating their areas and subdisciplines within marketing. The “giants” represented in this collection contributed to launch the field of marketing scholarship. These scholars were asked to write short essays reflecting on something that unfolded during their career or some story about their career path that could provide inspiration to other researchers. Several questions were offered as possible prompts: What was something you experienced at some point in your career that surprised you? What has made you most proud? Can you describe a professional occurrence that made you extremely happy? Can you describe something that happened in your career that was a disappointment at first but then you were happy to have experienced it? More generally, can you share a “cool” professional story, your choice of content, that may be historically reflective or inspirational? These “reflections” provide the fascinating back-stories to well-known research projects and contributions. It is very moving to read how appreciative these people are for their stellar careers, yet these stars still reflected a sense of awe and wonder regarding the twists and turns and serendipity of life.