SAMRA elects 2011/12 council

30 Aug 2011

At the recent Southern African Marketing Research Association (SAMRA) AGM in Johannesburg, the new council for 2011/12 was announced, with Prof Adré Schreuder to take over from Elsa Thirion-Venter as chair. The new council will assume their portfolios on 1 September 2011 and serve until 31 August 2012.

The new council is as follows:

Name	Group	Portfolio
Prof Adré Schreuder	director	chair
Jan Wegelin	director	chair elect/treasurer
Elsa Thirion-Venter	director	immediate past chair
Marna Kirchner	branch chair	Johannesburg branch chair
Juliet van Zyl	branch chair	Cape branch chair
Elsa Thirion-Venter	branch chair	Pretoria branch chair
Peter Highley	branch chair	KwaZulu chair
Liza Burmeister	branch chair	Namibia chair
Tania Scates	chairman's council	fieldworkers forum chair
Grand Lindhorst	chairman's council	research users forum (ruf) chair
Shirley Benney	chairman's council	SAMRA corporate chair
Elaine Alder	chairman's council	professional practice chair
Kobus Badenhorst	chairman's council	membership chair
Anina Maree	chairman's council	communications chair
Salome Barnard	communications portfolio	international communications portfolio chair
Monique Greenland	communications portfolio	internal communications portfolio chair
Schalk van Vuuren	membership portfolio	SAMRA journal chair
Kim Larsen	membership portfolio	conference and awards chair
Mzwandile Khanya	membership portfolio	membership diversity
Cletus Dube	membership portfolio	yearbook chair
Alex Kessel	professional practice portfolio	accreditation chair
Noluvuko Mathibe	professional practice portfolio	training and education chair
Leonie Vorster	professional practice portfolio	code of conduct chair
Leonie Vorster	professional practice portfolio	consumer protection act
Ronelle Colyn	professional practice portfolio	Sevices SETA chair

Thirion-Venter reviewed the past year and, with SAMRA facing a number of industry-related as well as legislative challenges, Schreuder spoke about the way forward in terms of the association's focus areas and activities in the coming year:

to ensure a well-regulated research industry through maintaining enhanced professional standards, creating increased awareness and providing quality information;
Jan Wegelin, Elsa Thirion Venter and Prof. Adré Schreuder
to enhance the credibility and reputation of all SAMRA members (re-establish the relevance and credibility of professional marketing research) among existing and new research users;
to position SAMRA as a credible authority and industry body representing members in regulatory challenges and relevance of the Consumer Protection Act (CPA) and the anticipated Protection of Private
Information Act;
to increase participation and alignment with relevant industry organisations such as DMASA, ASA and other marketing related bodies;
to diversify the membership base of SAMRA through a review of member categories and aggressive marketing efforts among researchers, users, academics and students;
to finalise and obtain member buy-in of the SAMRA 2011 strategic plan;
to implement and continuously measure progress of the 2011 strategic plan;
to investigate the introduction of a fulltime secretariat (appointment of CEO) in SAMRA;
to evaluate all functional portfolios in SAMRA and updating the SAMRA structure;
to develop policy and operational guidelines for each portfolio;
to offer a new updated conference format;
to active canvas more research users and promote client attendance at annual conference;
to enhance the quality of conference papers as a means to draw a wider and more diverse audience of delegates; and
to investigate the further enhancement of the SAMRA researcher accreditation programme