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FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: Helen K. Chang, 650-723-3358, Fax: 650-725-6750
Professor Arthur Kroeger Dies
June 1998
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—Arthur Kroeger, one of the core group of faculty who helped the Stanford Business School grow after World War II, died May 29 in Connecticut. He was 89.
A 1931 graduate of Stanford who earned his MBA at the Business School two years later, Kroeger joined the faculty as a marketing professor in 1946 and taught until his retirement in 1974. After leaving Stanford, he taught at University of Santa Clara for several years.
Kroeger recalled that he would have started his academic career shortly after receiving his MBA had it not been for Business School Dean J. Hugh Jackson who told the young would-be professor that he didn't believe people should teach business unless they had business experience. Kroeger followed Jackson's advice and went to work for the Manning's restaurant chain in 1933. His late wife, Julia Rose, was also employed by Manning's and the couple married a few years later. Kroeger said he found the work enjoyable and stayed with the firm until 1940 when he took his first academic job as an assistant professor of marketing at University of Idaho.
As World War II began, Kroeger joined the U.S. Naval Supply Corps. and later became a consultant with European Productivity Agency in Paris. He began teaching at the Business School in 1946 as returning GIs began to swell the School's enrollment.
During his academic career, Kroeger was co-author of the textbook Advertising Principles and Problems. In 1966 he published a history of the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business. He was a member of the American Academy of Advertising and the American Marketing Association.
Asked what he found the most satisfying part of teaching at the Business School, Kroeger told an interviewer in 1974: "Getting to know the students as individuals, seeing them go out and be successful and happy and knowing that you have been a factor in that success. Here students push you so you run faster to keep up, which makes it fun."
The son of an orange and walnut grower in Fullerton, CA, Kroeger said he developed an interest in sales and marketing watching his father anguish over marketing his crops during the Great Depression.
Kroeger is survived by his daughter Mary Katherine Porter of Mystic, CT.; brother William Kroeger of Borriego Springs, CA; brother Edward Kroeger of La Quinta, CA; sister Marguerite Spitzer of Fullerton, CA, and two grandchildren.
Services were held June 3 at Convent of the Sacred Heart in Menlo Park. The family asked that in lieu of flowers, memorial contributions be made to the Visiting Nurse Association of Southeastern Connecticut, 200 Boston Post Road, Waterford, CT 06385.
