Dr Marin Alexandrov Marinov is Professor of International Business at Aalborg University, Denmark. His academic work spreads on both sides of the Atlantic and in Asia, including countries as Bulgaria, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Sweden, Portugal, and China among many others. Professor Marinov has conducted extensive research in various parts of the world comprising the regions of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America participating in and heading large internationalization projects.  His research interests include management and marketing across national borders, internationalization of business, multinational firms and business development in emerging economies, as well as business policy and strategy. He has consulted for numerous multinational firms and national governments on country and firm-specific strategies in the process of business internationalization as well as the organizing and delivering business education in various country, regional and industry contexts. He has been on the editorial board of several reputable academic journals and periodicals in the fields of organization studies, marketing and management, including Organization Studies, Journal of Islamic Marketing, Journal of Euromarketing and Tržište.. He has published 18 books on international business and international marking together with his latest publication – Research Handbook on Marketing in Emerging Economies, numerous book chapters and articles in academic journals as well as such presented at international and global academic forums, conferences and congresses.

Dr Maja Konečnik Ruzzier is a professor of marketing in the Faculty of Economics of the University of Ljubljana (FELU). She has authored or co-authored more than fifty papers on branding, tourism, destination and SMEs, which have appeared in such journals as Journal of Business Research, Annals of Tourism Research, and Journal of Travel Research. Her articles are well cited (with more than 1800 citations according to Google Scholar as of March 2017); in particular, her article published in Annals of Tourism Research in 2007 is the most-cited article in this journal over a five-year period (2007-2012). She has written six books, served on several editorial boards and acted as a referee for more than twenty scientific journals. Dr. Konečnik Ruzzier is a course director for courses related to marketing principles in general, tourism marketing and branding at the FELU. She has also acted as a visiting professor at some foreign universities. In addition, she has been involved in the development of marketing and branding strategies for many organizations, including her significant contribution in the development of the current country brand ‘I feel Slovenia’.