Tim Ambler is currently Grand Metropolitan Senior Research Fellow at London Business School where he teaches Global Marketing and Doing Business in Greater China. His research interests include brandequity, how advertising works, marketing in China and other international markets and relationship marketing. He holds an MA (mathematics) from Oxford, an SM (majoring in marketing) from the Sloan School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants. Before becoming an academic, Tim Ambler spent some 30 years in business, initially as an accountant, switching to marketing in 1969. As Marketing Director for International Distillers and Vintners (IDV) for the UK during the 1970s, he was associated with the launch of Bailey's Irish Cream, Le Piat d'Or and the rise to leadership positions of Smirnoff Vodka and Croft Original Cream Sherry. More recently he held overall international marketing responsibility for IDV and worked extensively in the USA, Canada, Africa and emerging markets. IDV's development during the 1980s was a combination of new brand development, brand acquisitions which then needed to be integrated with the IDV network, new market entries and organic brand development. He now believes in pragmatic approaches to marketing on the one hand and the need for people based, relational, theories of international marketing on the other. His experience and research combine to underscore the importance of brands and the marketplace as the place to understand them