Vale Roger A. Layton - The Father of Marketing in our region

Emeritus Professor Roger Layton passed away on the 5^th of June 2021. He is the father of modern marketing in our region, starting in 1967 with his appointment as the first Chair of Marketing at UNSW. He was Head of the School, of Marketing at UNSW from 1967 to 1992 and Dean of the Faculty from 1992 to 2002.

Over the years he has played a major role in the development of marketing research, education and practice in our region and in establishing its place on the world stage. He has also established a worldwide reputation for his research, especially in the areas of marketing systems theory and macromarketing. His research has been published in leading international journals in marketing including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research and Journal of Macromarketing.

His contributions have been recognized and celebrated in many ways. For his services to marketing research and education he was made a Member of the Order of Australia in June 1998. He is a Fellow of all the major business related research institutes in Australia, as well as the Royal Society of NSW. At a dinner celebrating 50 years at UNSW, Bob Hawke, the ex-Prime Minister of Australia came to pay his respects and give a speech in his honour. In 1997 ANZMAC gave him the inaugural award of Distinguished Marketing Educator:

‘‘Professor Layton has been a leader in developing marketing in the South Pacific since its infancy. For decades he has contributed to major international journals and served on their editorial boards, turned Ph.D. students into productive scholars, published textbooks, and developed leading academic programs. Roger has done much, for many, over a long period of time with respect to marketing-related research, teaching and service’’.

In 2012 there was a special issue of the Australian Marketing Journal (Volume 20 Issue 3) celebrating his life and research, which included contributions from many distinguished scholars from around the world.

Roger was intimately involved with the setting up of most of the major research and business organisations related to marketing in Australia. He was Foundation President of the Australia and New Zealand Marketing Association, which was eventually absorbed into the Australian Marketing Institute. These are the forerunners of the Australia and New Zealand Marketing Academy. He also played a leading role in setting up the Market Research Society of Australia and The Australian Institute of Export.

In the 1970s he was one of the first to see the importance of Australia’s relation with Japan and set up the Centre for Japanese Studies in the then Faculty of Commerce at UNSW), which grew into an autonomous area in the Faculty and later moved to the Faculty of Arts. In the 1980s he recognised the increasing importance of services marketing, which led to him setting up the Hospitality Management Centre at UNSW. In the 1990s, when he was Dean of  Faculty of Commerce, he was one of the first into China, visiting over 50 times, and helped establish Chinese studies at UNSW. The respect he is shown in China is indicated by him being made an Honorary Citizen of Guangzhou City by the Guangzhou City Government in 2000.

From the beginning, Roger took a broad view of marketing, not just as a business function but as a provisioning system in a society that played a key role in its development. This informed his research and teaching over the years, which established his international reputation as one of the leading scholars in the area and resulted in many research awards. He continued to be an active researcher right up to the end, with his latest paper ,published this year in the Australasian Marketing Journal, showing his continuing depth and breadth of scholarship: Layton, R. A., & Domegan, C. (2021). The Next Normal for Marketing—The Dynamics of a Pandemic, Provisioning Systems, and the Changing Patterns of Daily Life. Australasian Marketing Journal, 29(1), 4-14.

Ian Wilkinson and Louise Young
8^th June 2021

If you have news or content to share, please send us a message on one our social media channels or email us, and we can post straightaway!

To be kept in the loop about ANZMAC news and events, including our 2021 conference which is a hybrid of in-person and online, submit your details below....