Sally Dibb is Professor of Marketing and Society in CBiS. In 2022 she was awarded the prestigious Academy of Marketing Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to Marketing. Previously she was Director of the Institute for Social Marketing at the Open University (ISM-Open) and, before that, Associate Dean at Warwick Business School. She was Deputy Chair of the REF 2021 panel for Business and Management and also served on the REF 2014 panel. Sally’s research focuses on consumer behaviour change, market segmentation and social marketing, with recent projects funded by the ESRC, Leverhulme, FP7, Santander and InnovateUK. Sally was founding Chair of the Academy of Marketing’s Segmentation and Targeting Strategy SIG and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. She has authored twelve books and over 100 articles in European and US academic journals, and has successfully supervised 21 PhD students to completion. Sally’s research is inter-disciplinary, embracing social marketing, innovation and data science, with projects currently examining financial wellbeing, behaviour change, privacy and security, as well as the application of ‘big data’. She is a member of the peer review college for the ESRC, Horizon 2020, the Australian Research Council and the Canadian Research Council. Sally is a trustee and Vice Chair of a local hospice; a former board member of the charity Alcohol Research UK, having been appointed by the Secretary of State for Health as a trustee of the Alcohol Education Research Council; and sits on the National Trust's National Research Strategy Group.

My research in marketing strategy and consumer behaviour is underpinned by an interest in data. I’m interested in how data can be used to change consumer and citizen behaviour, particularly in areas that can improve well-being. E.g. how can data help different stakeholders to work together to tackle bigger issues facing society, such as financial wellbeing, security, sustainability, and health? My research also examines how organisations capture and use data to achieve their objectives. E.g. what impact have Big Data and digitalisation had on how organisations make strategic decisions? Recently my research has examined the privacy issues that exist between those producing data and those who consume it, examining the circumstances in which consumers are prepared to share their data and what benefits they expect in return. 

I draw on my research to enrich student learning through a range of activities, including the production of teaching case studies and materials, supporting module leaders to ensure course content reflects the latest research, guest lectures and the mentoring of student projects. These include a recent undergraduate project examining the public communication strategies used by governments around the world as part of the pandemic response.