The 27th annual Southern African Institute for Management Scientists (SAIMS) Conference, themed ‘Management in Southern Africa: Change, Challenge and Opportunity’, was hosted on 30 August 2015 in conjunction with the School of Management Studies at the University of Cape Town.

Eight staff members of UP’s Department of Marketing Management attended and/or presented papers at the Conference, of which five were full competitive papers and two work-in-progress papers. Themes covered in these papers ranged from Twitter usage, online retail websites, and environmentally friendly behaviour, to mobile networks, service loyalty of customers, brand growth and value, and customer relationship management.

A post-conference research workshop was presented by Dr Naresh Malhotra, Senior Fellow at Georgia Tech CIBER and Regents' Professor Emeritus at Scheller College of Business in the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA. Dr Malhotra was selected as a Marketing Legend in 2010 and his refereed journal articles were published in nine volumes by Sage, with tributes by other leading scholars in the field. In 2011, he received the Best Professor in Marketing Management, Asia Best B-School Award and was selected to receive the Hind Rattan Award in 2012.

The workshop was on qualitative and quantitative approaches to theory development and testing, and was very insightful and of great value from a research point of view. Staff members used the opportunity to liaise with Dr Malhotra and received a personal invitation to attend the ECMB conference in Bangkok in January 2016. He also expressed his interest in visiting the Department of Marketing Management in the future.