Leaders In Business To Confer On Marketing

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30809, 22 July 1965, Page 22

Leaders In Business To Confer On Marketing

About 20 leading figures in New Zealand business will assemble at the University of Canterbury today for a two-day invitation conference on the emergence of marketing as a major problem in business management. Sponsored by the university’s department of extension studies and faculty of commerce, the conference will bring together the managing directors and senior executives of organisations in all major industrial and commercial fields. Manufacturing interests include textiles, electronics, chemicals, food processing, engineering and construction, and rubber products.

From the distributors’ field are heads of major retail establishments, meat and wool marketing organisations, and oil and motor-vehicle companies. The purpose of the conference is to examine the impact of managerial attitudes on the efficiency of marketing, with particular reference to comparative New Zealand performances in domestic and international markets. Four prepared papers will be presented and discussed at the conference, which will be opened by the Chancellor of the University (Mr C. H. Perkins). The key address will be given by Professor Reavis Cox, professor of marketing at the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce in the University of Pennsylvania, and a paper on psychological insights into marketing policies will be given by Professor I. N. McCollom, professor of psychology at San Diego State College, California.

Quantitative approaches to marketing management will be covered by Professor A. D. Brownlie, professor of economics at the University of Canterbury. Strategic and tactical plan-

ning in international marketing policy will be discussed by Professor B. P. Philpott, professor of agricultural economics at Lincoln College. The official commentators who will lead discussion on each paper, are Mr D. O. Walker, director of marketing for New Zealand Forest Products, Ltd.; Dr. R. A. M. Gregson, reader in psychology at the University of Canterbury; Mr L. H. Govan, director of Litchfield (N.Z.), Ltd.; and Mr L. A. Cameron, general manager of the Gear Meat Company, Ltd. “Enthusiastic Support” “The conference is a deliberate effort by the university to bring together senior academic staff, particularly our two distinguished American visitors, and a select but representative group from the business world who have responsibilities in policy making for marketing activities in this country,” said the chairman of the organising committee (Professor A. S. Carrington). “It is felt that this is a fruitful way of sharing the experience and knowledge of overseas thinking which Professor Cox and Professor McCollom bring to this field. The academic’ participants also welcome the opportunity to benefit from the well-informed views of those actively engaged in the problems of marketing. “In view of the enthusiastic support which the conference has received, the University of Canterbury hopes that the present conference may become the forerunner of other functions at which businessman and academic may collaborate in areas of mutual interest,” said Professor Carrington, head of the department of accountancy.