Anne Coughlan received her bachelor’s degree in Economics (Phi Beta Kappa, with Honors and Distinction, 1977) and her Ph.D. in Economics (1982) both from Stanford University. From 1981 to 1985 she taught at the Graduate School of Business of the University of Rochester as an assistant professor of Economics and Marketing. Since 1985 she has been on the Marketing faculty at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where she is currently a tenured Associate Professor of Marketing. She was a visiting Professor of Marketing at INSEAD, in Fontainebleau, France, during the 1997-98 school year.

Professor Coughlan’s teaching, research, and consulting interests lie in the areas of distribution channel management and design, pricing, competitive strategy, and the international applications of these areas. She teaches courses in distribution channel management and design to the Kellogg students in the regular MBA program, the Executive Masters’ Program, and the International Executive MBA program. She won Teacher of the Year awards for the best elective course in the Executive Masters’ Program at Kellogg in 1996 and 2003, and the Sidney J. Levy Teaching Award in 2000-2001. She is a frequent lecturer in executive programs on distribution and pricing, both at Kellogg and around the world. She has consulted and done executive education for various companies including Monsanto, Motorola, AT&T, Square D, Bulkmatic, The Tribune Company, GlaxoSmithkline, Roche, DJ Ortho, and J.M. Huber Engineered Materials.

Professor Coughlan is the lead author (with co-authors Erin Anderson, Louis W. Stern, and Adel I. El-Ansary) of Marketing Channels, 7th edition (Prentice-Hall, 2006), a leading textbook and reference work in the area of distribution channel design and management. She has also written many scholarly research articles and her work has been published in journals such as Marketing Science, Management Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Business, and Journal of Marketing.

She has served as an Area Editor for Marketing Science and has served on the editorial boards of Journal of Marketing Research and Marketing Letters. She is currently an Associate Editor at Journal of Economics and Management Strategy and serves on the editorial board of Marketing Science. She is a co-editor of the Quantitative Marketing Network of the Social Sciences Research Network. Professor Coughlan was elected Secretary-Treasurer (1988-89) and President (1992-93) of the College on Marketing of The Institute for Management Sciences.

Professor Coughlan served on the Board of Trustees of The Kent Funds (a Michigan-based bank proprietary mutual fund family) from 1994-97 and has served since 1994 on the board of directors of The Care of Trees, a national tree care company in the United States. She has been a member of the Advisory Board of Channel Velocity, a reverse logistics company, since September 2004. She served on the Program Committee of the Japan-America Society of Chicago from 1992-1996.

Professor Coughlan is currently doing research on gray marketing, dual distribution in retailing, sales force compensation, direct selling organization management and compensation, brand equity investments in the grocery channel, and the optimal allocation of activities in multi-member distribution channels.

Erin Anderson is the John H. Loudon Chaired Professor of International Management and Professor of Marketing at INSEAD (The European Institute of Business Administration) in Fontainebleau, France, which she joined in 1994.

Her research focuses around the problems of motivating, structuring, and controlling sales forces and channels of distribution. She emphasizes issues related to vertical integration, including modes of foreign market entry. She takes a field-data approach to these issues, which she structures using a blend of institutional economics, macro-level organization theory, strategic management, and marketing directory.

Anderson has published articles, based primarily on original field research, in a number of journals, including the Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Marketing Science, Rand Journal of Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Organization Science, Journal of International Business, and the Sloan Management Review. In addition, she serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research and International Journal of Research in Marketing. With Bob Trinkle, she has authored Outsourcing the Sales Function: The Real Cost of Field Sales, published by Thomson Texere Publishing.

Anderson has consulted or been involved in executive teaching for a range of industrial companies, including DuPont, Air Liquide, Lafarge, and Alcatel, as well as consumer goods companies such as Heuer Time and Electronics, Motorola Cellular Systems, and Phillips Lighting. She has lectured for executive audiences in England, France, Spain and Belgium as well as the United States and Canada.

Dr. Anderson received her PhD in Marketing in 1982 from the Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior joining INSEAD, Anderson was Associate Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where she had been a faculty member since 1981. Anderson has taught at the Catholic University of Mons, Belgium, and has been a visiting scholar at the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management, Brussels.

Adel I. El-Ansary is the Donna L. Harper Professor of Marketing at the University of North Florida. He is the recipient of the State of Florida University System Professional Excellence Award, 1999 and Prime Osborne III Distinguished Professor Award, 2000. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of North Florida as the First Holder of the Paper and Plastics Educational Research Foundation Eminent Scholar Chair in Wholesaling, he served as Professor and Chairman of Business Administration at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

El-Ansary is a Fulbright Scholar. He is co-author of the leading text-reference books on E-Marketing, 3rd, and 4th edition, Prentice-Hall, 2003-206 and Marketing Channels, 1st through 7th edition, Prentice-Hall, 1977 - 2006. He is also a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Marketing, Encyclopedia of Economics, American Marketing Association Marketing Encyclopedia, the Logistics Handbook, and over thirty-five books and conference proceedings. El-Ansary’s research and writing contributed twenty key articles published in major journal including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing Channels, Journal of Retailing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Macro Marketing, Journal of Relationship Marketing, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, and European Business Review, International Marketing Review.

El-Ansary was privileged to serve on the National Advisory Board of U.S. Small Business Administration under Presidents Nixon and Ford, the Board of Director of the International Consultants Foundation, the Global Council of the American Marketing Association, Founder of the Special Interest Group in Wholesale Distribution and Co-Chairman of the Relationship Marketing Interest Group of the Academic Council of the American Marketing Association, and Member of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Marketing Science.