The 2020 AMA Winter Academic Conference last week turned out a huge success. Entitled “Consumers and Firms in a Global World”, this year’s conference was a blast and a summary of it is brought to you in a following short recap.
The first conference event we would like to highlight is a CBSIG-sponsored special session that took place on Friday afternoon (February 14th). The title of the session was “How Smart Tech Shapes Consumer Behavior: Current Research Frontiers,” and the audience was treated to an eclectic and thought-provoking set of four presentations. Markus Giesler, Donna Hoffman, Ela Veresiu, Amber Epp, Ashok Kumar Kaliyamurthy, Hope J. Schau, Thomas P. Novak, Shiri Melumad, Robert Meyer, and Nicholas Pendarvis provided intellectually stimulating discussions of how algorithms shape consumer practices, how smartphones enhance consumer self-disclosure, how branded technologies modulate consumption practices as well as AI perceptions. The presenters left the audience inspired about smart technology and its consumer implications, attracting an engaged audience of approximately 140 people.
Next morning, whereas many of our CBSIG friends proceeded to either “Meet the Editor Session” or Mentor Networking Breakfast, the CBSIG leadership team held a semi-annual status report meeting at the hotel’s Vistal restaurant to catch up on things relevant to the CBSIG membership. What a great team-building platform and some quality and productive time spent with colleagues and friends!
Later in the day, all of us rushed to the Embarcadero room for what has become a traditional CBSIG reception to welcome all the consumer behavior scholars in attendance as well as our friends from other SIGs. The reception featured several CBSIG announcements in addition to annual award presentations. Donna Hoffman kicked off the event on behalf of our team by telling the audience about our special interest group and what we do. As part of the reception, we also gave out our annual CBSIG awards: 2020 Rising Star Award (Dafna Goor, Harvard University), 2020 Consumer Behavior Research in Practice Award (Jared Watson, New York University, Anastasiya Pocheptsova Ghosh, University of Arizona, and Michael Trusov, University of Maryland), and finally the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award (Debbie MacInnis, University of Southern California). Kudos to the winners!
Last but not the least, there were some other CBSIG-relevant Winter AMA events like the successful Journal of Marketing-AMA 1.5 day research development workshop and 6th Annual Organizational Frontlines Research Symposium.
Below you can review a series of conference photos including those taken at the CBSIG events.
Kind regards,
Your friendly CBSIG officers