The development of the Marketing Excellence Survey was sparked by the CEO of Lucas Industries when he asked Dr. Best to assess the marketing competency of his senior management and marketing managers. Since there were no established measurement scales or guidelines for assessing a manager's marketing knowledge at that time, he had to start from scratch.
With the assistance of Lucas Industries, DuPont, Eastman Kodak, and Qwest, the present Marketing Excellence Survey was developed, tested, and refined. In its present form, the Marketing Excellence Survey is the result of fourteen years of work, two spent in development and refinement and the last twelve spent in building the MES Database to its current level of over 45,000 managers from around the world.
Dr. Roger J. Best
The Marketing Excellence Survey (MES) was developed by Dr. Roger J. Best, Emeritus Professor of Marketing at the University of Oregon. He worked as an engineer and product manager at GE for several years before a 25 year career in teaching and consulting. He is the author of Market-Based Management: Strategies for Growing Customer Value and Profitability, 3rd edition, Prentice-Hall and co-author of Consumer Behavior: Building Marketing Strategies, 9th edition, McGraw-Hill. Dr. Best has won numerous teaching awards and in 1998 he received the American Marketing Association Distinguished Teaching in Marketing award. He has worked in executive marketing education for over 20 years with companies including General Electric, Dow Chemical, Dow Corning, DuPont, Eastman Kodak, James Hardie, MediaOne Group, Lucas Industries, Tektronix, US West, and many others.