The original purpose of A Preface to Marketing Management —to deliver a clear and concise presentation of the basic principles of marketing—is as relevant today as it was in earlier editions. To us this means emphasizing quality content and avoiding excess verbiage, pictures, and lists. We think we have succeeded in doing so since a reviewer called our book "pound for pound the best introductory marketing text available."

We introduce the 12 th edition with a sense of accomplishment knowing that our book and its eight foreign translations have been used throughout the world whenever courses require an overview of the critical aspects of marketing management. Consequently, the book has been used successfully in a wide variety of different course settings and is the best selling book of its kind. We believe it has endured because we continuously fine tune and update it to ensure that it meets the current and evolving needs of both students and instructors. Because marketing is about figuring out how to do a superior job of satisfying customers, we simply seek to practice what we preach. We refer to our book as the Preface. Welcome to this edition which is organized into four sections.

J. Paul Peter has been a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin since 1981. He was a member of the faculty at Indiana State, Ohio State, and Washington University before joining the Wisconsin faculty. While at Ohio State, he was named Outstanding Marketing Professor by the students and has won the John R. Larson Teaching Award at Wisconsin. He has taught a variety of courses including Marketing Management, Marketing Strategy, Consumer Behavior, Marketing Research, and Marketing Theory, among others.

Professor Peter's research has appeared in the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Retailing, and the Academy of Management Journal, among others. His article on construct validity won the prestigious William O'Dell Award from the Journal of Marketing Research, and he was a finalist for this award on two other occasions. Recently, he was the recipient of the Churchill Award for Lifetime Achievement in Marketing Research, given by the American Marketing Association and the Gaumnitz Distinguished Faculty Award from the School of Business, University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is an author or editor of over 30 books, including A Preface to Marketing Management eleventh edition; Marketing Management: Knowledge and Skills, eighth edition; Consumer Behavior and Marketing Strategy; eighth edition; Strategic Management: Concepts and Applications, third edition; and Marketing: Creating Value for Customers, second edition. He is one of the most cited authors in the marketing literature.

Professor Peter has served on the review boards of the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, and Journal of Business Research and was measurement editor for JMR and professional publications editor for the American Marketing Association. He has taught in a variety of executive programs and consulted for several corporations as well as the Federal Trade Commission.

James H. Donnelly, Jr. has spent his academic career in the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky. In 1990 he received the first Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Teaching given at the University. Previously, he had twice received the UK Alumni Association's Great Teacher Award, an award one can only be eligible to receive every 10 years. He has also received two Outstanding Teacher awards from Beta Gamma Sigma, national business honorary. In 1992 he received an Acorn Award recognizing “those who shape the future” from the Kentucky Advocates for Higher Education. In 2001 and 2002 he was selected as “Best University of Kentucky Professor.” In 1995 he became one of six charter members elected to the American Bankers Association's Bank Marketing Hall of Fame. He has also received a “Distinguished Doctoral Graduate Award” from the University of Maryland.

During his career he has published in the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Retailing, Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Business Research, and Operations Research among others. He has served on the editorial review board of the Journal of Marketing. He is the author of more than a dozen books, which include widely adopted academic texts as well as professional books.

Professor Donnelly is very active in the banking industry where he has served on the board of directors of the Institute of Certified Bankers and the ABA's Marketing Network. He has also served as academic dean of the ABA's School of Bank Marketing and Management.