Cranfield Professor recieves Lifetime Achievement Award

Malcolm McDonald, Emeritus Professor of Marketing at Cranfield School of Management, has been honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2013 UK Customer Experience Awards. Emeritus Professor Leo Murray (a former head of School) presented Malcolm with the prestigious award at a gala ceremony in London on 17 October. The UK Customer Experience Awards is an annual event that celebrates and promotes excellence in customer experience across a broad spectrum of industries.

Receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award, Malcolm said: “Cranfield has a rich heritage in helping organisations, big and small, to create shareholder value by creating customer value. In all my 75 years I have never known a company go bankrupt because of poor products. They fail because of a lack of customers. 80% of all corporate value resides in intangible assets, which don’t appear on balance sheets, yet it is these assets, principally customer relationships, which create customer value.

He continued: “The UK Customer Experience Awards is a fabulous initiative that recognises the main driver of corporate profitability and I am extremely proud to have been given this prestigious award.”

Neil Skehel, Managing Director of Awards International which organised the event, said: “As a marketing guru Malcolm has made a huge difference to many organisations and their customer experience. Marketing have historically been the custodians of the customer, it is fitting that the award comes at a time when that baton has been handed to customer experience professionals.”

This year, the UK Customer Experience Awards partnered with the Cranfield Customer Management Forum (CCMF), a business network run by the School’s Centre for Strategic Marketing and Sales. CCMF will be producing a white paper and follow up event to the Awards which will focus on drawing out best practice in customer experience.

Professor Malcolm McDonald MA (Oxon) MSc PhD D.Litt FCIM FRSA, until recently was Professor of Marketing and Deputy Director, Cranfield University School of Management, with special responsibility for e-business, and is now an Emeritus Professor at the University as well as being an Honorary Professor at Warwick Business School.

Malcolm is a graduate in English Language and Literature from Oxford University, in Business Studies from Bradford University Management Centre, and has a PhD from Cranfield University. He has written over 40 books, including the best seller ‘Marketing Plans: How to prepare them, how to use them’, and more than one hundred articles and papers.