Sarah Montano is Professor of Retail Marketing at University of Birmingham. She leads the modules 'Services and Retail Marketing' and 'International Marketing Strategy' for the MSc Marketing. She is the BBC's retail expert, writes for the College Blog and the BBC website and often appears on the BBC news and radio channels to talk about a range of retail subjects such as Cyber Monday.

She is currently Deputy Director of Education (Digital) for the College of Social Sciences where she leads in the use of digital education resources and the development of distance learning programmes. Prior to working in academia, she worked in retail at a senior management level. Her academic area of research is retail and consumer behaviour, with particular focus on understanding the role of retail in creating community third spaces.