Emeritus Professor Michael James Thomas (1933-2010)

Citation

Kotler, P. (2011), "Emeritus Professor Michael James Thomas (1933-2010)", Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 29 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/mip.2011.02029aaa.002

Emeritus Professor Michael James Thomas (1933-2010)

Article Type: Foreword From: Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Volume 29, Issue 1

In the course of life, we all meet many people but, looking back, only a few will stand out. One that stands out in my memory is Michael Thomas, a well educated young Englishman from Birmingham who had graduated with an MBA from Indiana University. This period was the 1960s, when marketing was experiencing massive public awareness and I had what turned out to be a seminal text and was busy spreading knowledge about marketing to audiences just clamouring for more. Michael was one of those to be swept up in this marketing revolution and attend my early seminars. He became involved in the American Marketing Association and became a Director of the Marketing Management Division. Yet, Michael was different from others. He always had a strong social consciousness, and also advocated something which I have always endorsed: conducting analysis to provide a rational basis for taking action.

The resume of Michael Thomas makes for interesting reading. He served in the army as a Lieutenant in the Royal West African Frontier Force before studying Economics at University College, London. He was then awarded in 1956 a Fulbright Scholarship to study for an MBA at Indiana University and that was when he met Nancy Yeoman, who was to become his wife in 1958. Not surprisingly, this was the beginning also of his lifelong link with the USA, even if he did return to London to work for a few years as Market Research Manager with Metal Box. He returned to the USA, working at Syracuse University between 1960 and 1971, then moved back to England and to the University of Lancaster in 1971, where they had created the first Chair of Marketing in the UK. Michael joined this new department, the first University Department of Marketing in the UK.

Michael could have pursued many careers. It was by no means certain that he would be an academic. A man with firm values, he had a strong sense of social consciousness, interested in social processes but also in social justice. He had a great deal of energy and a desire to contribute to society and effect change, which helped guide him through the difficulties that he later faced in seeking to encourage those working for a free market within Poland.

Back in the UK, Michael continued to develop links with the profession, and his rise to the top of the Market Research Society and the Chartered Institute of Marketing has been well cited. Michael was a pioneer, and with a strong sense of responsibility evidenced by his interest in social marketing.

Michael’s contribution to the marketing profession is a very significant one. He held all the key roles in the profession in the UK. He had been Chair of the Marketing Education Group, President of the Market Research Society and Chair of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. In later life, he was decorated by both the British and Polish Governments, but I can justly claim to have known him long before as a strongly motivated young man who was able to realise fully the potential that we all saw in him.

Philip Kotler