Foss Initiatives Limited

ABOUT US - PROF. MERLIN STONE

Merlin is Head of Research at The Customer Framework. He is a leading expert in customer management, including strategies and tactics for customer recruitment, retention, and development and has been a leading contributor to the development of the customer management assessment methodologies for which The Customer Framework is best known. His work focuses on improving customer experience, satisfaction, loyalty and trust, and also the customer research, data analysis, systems decisions and supplier selection and management needed to support improved management of customers. He is also well known for his work on thought leadership and public relations – improving clients’ communications to the media and customers, including explaining complex propositions and conducting media interviews. This includes conference speaking (especially for client events) and thought leadership research, which focuses on clients’ customers and prospects, the issues they face, how they handle them, and where they need help. He is an active researcher on many aspects of customer management.

He is author or co-author of many articles and thirty books on customer management, many of them with Neil Woodcock, Chairman of the Customer Framework.The UK’s Chartered Institute of Marketing listed Merlin in 2003 as one of the world’s top 50 marketing thinkers, he was nominated as one of the 20 most influential people in the direct marketing industry in a Precision Marketing readership poll in 2003, while NOP World nominated him in 2004 as one of 100 most influential individuals for their input and influence on the development and growth of e-commerce and the internet in the UK over the previous 10 years. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and an Honorary Life Fellow of the UK’s Institute of Direct Marketing. He is also on the editorial advisory boards of several academic journals.

He has a first class honours degree and doctorate in economics from Sussex University, UK. In parallel to his business career, he has also pursued a full academic career, holding senior posts at various universities. He is now a visiting professor at De Montfort, Oxford Brookes and Portsmouth Universities, teaches economics for the Open University and marketing for Exeter University.

See also Merlin's personal website www.Merlin-Stone.com.