Stephen Hoch
Professor of Marketing, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Steve is the Patty & Jay H. Baker Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and faculty director the Baker Retailing Initiative. Previously, he taught at the University of Chicago where he directed the Micro-Marketing Project, a joint research effort between a leading grocery chain and 20 packaged goods manufacturers. Prior to his academic career, he worked at Walt Disney Productions in various marketing positions. He has a Ph.D. from Northwestern, an M.B.A. from U.C.L.A., and a B.A. in Human Biology from Stanford. His research interests range from understanding retail strategy & consumer behavior to how experts should interact with new information technologies. He has helped retailers utilize POP scanner data to: (1) improve everyday and promotional pricing practices; (2) manage the variety of assortments; & (3) increase profitability through cross promotion and loyalty programs.
Paula Courtney
President, Verde Group
A passionate change agent and entrepreneur, believes that organizations remain competitive and profitable when they are brilliant at the basics of service delivery. Working with customers in diverse industries such as manufacturing, transportation, pharmaceutical and financial services, she has established and implemented world class practices in both customer service and customer retention measurement. Specifically, she helps organizations identify the issues that impact customer retention the most, and then facilitates the development of strategies that achieve the biggest ROI. She is skilled in the areas of assessment design, qualitative research, strategy development, and executive facilitation and training. A frequent conference presenter, Paula has delivered presentations for various industry and professional associations. . Paula is also an author of numerous articles and features on the subject of customer service and call centre management.
Mike Hayes
SVP Marketing, Bon-Ton Stores, Inc.
Mike Hayes is the Senior Vice President, Marketing and Administration Services for the Bon Ton Stores, Inc. The Bon-Ton Stores, Inc. operates 280 stores, including ten furniture galleries, in 23 states in the Northeast, Midwest and upper Great Plains under the Bon-Ton, Bergner’s, Boston Store, Carson Pirie Scott, Elder-Beerman, Herberger’s and Younkers nameplates and, under the Parisian nameplate, three stores in the Detroit, Michigan area. Mike head's up the Marketing function for the company and is currently leading Bon Ton's Marketing Transformation effort to bring fact-based insights for better decision making and to shift from a merchandise to a customer focused operating model.
Jon Stine
Director in the Retail-Consumer Products, Cisco
Jon C. Stine joined Cisco Systems in 2006 as Director in the Retail-Consumer Products-Transportation vertical within Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG). He is responsible for research and direct customer advisement at the critical intersection of business and technology. Current areas of focus include retail brand loyalty, architectures and services required for the scaling of consumer experiences, emerging markets supply chain, and the enterprise use of web 2.0 technologies. Prior to Cisco, he served as the Global Industry Manager for the Retail-Consumer Products-Logistics practice at Intel, where he achieved a leading role for Intel in new store transaction and display technologies, digital supply chain architectures, and RFID-EPC. Before Intel, Jon posted 15 years of executive leadership in the consumer products industry. A regular speaker for industry events and forums worldwide, he resides in Portland, Oregon, USA
Chad White
Director of Retail Insights/Editor, Email Experience Council
Chad White is the director of retail insights and editor-at-large for the Email Experience Council, the Direct Marketing Association's email marketing arm. He is also the founder and author of RetailEmail.Blogspot, a blog dedicated to tracking the email marketing campaigns of more than 110 of the largest online retailers. He highlights current trends and noteworthy campaigns in daily posts and regularly produces major research reports on email marketing best practices.
Laura Davis-Taylor
Founder & Principal, Retail Media Consulting
Laura joined Miller Zell as a Vice President and led accounts such as Circuit City, Wal-Mart and H&R Block, working intimately with her clients to help them build strategies around all points of customer experience and communications. Laura and her team focus on helping brands strategize and execute media experiences within the store as a marketing vehicle. She is currently co-authoring her first book "Lighting up the Aisle: Principles and Practices for In-Store Digital Media."
Robert Fort
CIO, Virgin Entertainment Group
Robert Fort is an internationally recognized and awarded business leader and innovator with over 25 years of progressive information technology experience. Continually on the leading edge of technology adoption, he’s championed and implemented, in multiple industries, some of the earliest and most successful ERP, business intelligence, self-service kiosk, and VoIP implementations. Robert has held senior management roles at MGM/UA, A&M Records, Nestlé USA, Koo Koo Roo, and others.
Andrew Austin
Director, Retail Customer Experience, AT&T
As Director for Retail Customer Experience for AT&T, Andrew is responsible for execution of product realization in retail locations, focusing on the use of technology to present AT&T's industry-leading suite of products and services to shoppers. Prior to this role, Andrew led national sales operations for the Dealer channel at AT&T, developing sales effectiveness programs for more than 4500 sales locations; including compensation, merchandising training and product presentation initiatives. Before that, he was Director of Sales Operations for all of Cingular Wireless' operations in Washington state. Previously, Andrew's career included marketing and sales roles for MCI/WorldCom and Caesars (a subsidiary of Harrah's Entertainment.) He holds a BA from the University of California.
Andy Nulman
President & CMO, Airborne Mobile
Andy is the President and CMO of Airborne Mobile, which was honoured as North America's 4th-fastest growing tech companies in Deloitte's Fast 500 rankings in 2006, on a year after being sold to Japan's Cybrid Holdings. In 1999, Andy co-founded Airborne with Garner Bornstein, and has created innovative mobile content and applications for brands like Maxim, Family Guy, the NHL and Taco Bell. Andy has also written two best-selling books, "How To Do The Impossible" and "I Almost Killed George Burns." He was named one of the "Top 40 Under 40" business leaders by the Financial Post in 1997, and boted one of the Top 100 Montrealers of the 20th Century by the Montreal Gazette in 2000. Andy was also honored as a distinguished recipient of the McGill Management Achievement Award in 2004.
Frank Urbaniak
Consulting Principle, C-CORE Consulting Group
Frank Urbaniak has spent his professional career working in retail store automation operations, and has spent the past six years as a Consulting Principal of C-CORE Consulting Group. During that time C-CORE has focused on process and program management, building IT roadmaps for retailers, and developing toolkits-a methodology to assist retailers in defining system requirements and accelerating the evaluation and selection of technology. This has led to the release of RAPID Project Toolkits for POS, Workforce Management and Fresh Item Management. The toolkit methodology has been used successfully at retailers such as Sobeys, AMC Theatres, New York and Company, Subway, Interstate Batteries and The Pantry.
Kevin Sterneckert
Research Director, AMR Research
Kevin Sterneckert brings over 25 years of experience to AMR Research’s Retail team, where he will focus on merchandising and explore best practices in merchandise planning, financial planning, and assortment, space, and allocation management. He was most recently Senior Director of Product Strategy- Merchandise Planning & Optimization Solutions at Oracle. Senior Director - IS at Daymon Worldwide Inc. VP & GM - Retail at DemandTec, Inc.
Christopher Fletcher
Research Director, AMR Research
Chris Fletcher brings more than 25 years of industry experience to his role as a research director at AMR Research. A well-known industry analyst and enterprise applications veteran, Chris is responsible for research and coverage in Customer-Facing Technologies, eCommerce, Enterprise Mobility, and Enterprise 2.0 as a member of AMR’s Enterprise Strategies Service. Prior to joining AMR Research, Chris was director of alliance and solutions marketing at Nokia. Chris was also a vice president and research director with Aberdeen Group for six years. Chris has held a variety of business development and management positions within established and start-up technology companies such as Action Technologies, AT&T, Staffware plc, and Symbol Technologies. Chris has been quoted in many leading trade and business publications including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and InformationWeek.