In July 2019, in Bern, Switzerland, the CBSIG held its first conference. The conference theme, “Managerially Relevant Consumer Insights,” was aligned with the mission of the CBSIG to contribute to AMA, academic, and practitioner interactions (on varied topics such as consumer experiences, consumer welfare, communities, innovation, branding, desires and decision processes). CBSIG is comprised of academics interested in consumer behavior insights for managerial decision making.
The conference co-chairs (June Cotte, Harley Krohmer, and Wayne Hoyer) had a blast organizing and running this very successful event. We had 103 paper submissions. Of these, 41% were accepted for presentation in one of two concurrent sessions, while a further 20% were invited to present a posterduring an evening poster session and reception.
We had a small interactive conference, with 115 attendees. Research presenters hailed from 19 countries: Austria, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, Canada, Israel, Norway, Spain, France, Korea, Poland, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Singapore, United States, and Hong Kong, for a truly global meeting of the minds.
The conference featured a very entertaining and informative Keynote Address at lunch from Marc Langenbrink, CEO of Mercedes-Benz Switzerland. Marc spoke about Customer Centricity in the Age of Digitalisation, and he was a great addition to the conference agenda.
We handed out two best paper awards. In no particular order, the Best Papers at the conference were given to: Jared Watson, New York University and Amna Kirmani, University of Maryland for their paper: “Red Flag! The Consequences of Alerting Consumers to Fake Reviews,” as well as to Uzma Khan and May Yuan, University of Miami, and Ajay Kalra, Rice University for their paper: ““Understanding Consumers Preference for Artificial Intelligence.”
June, Harley, and Wayne would like to thank our Program Committee, shown below, as well as the many ad-hoc reviewers who contributed to the high level of excellence of the conference, and who helped us stay very true to the conference theme. And June and Wayne would like to personally thank Harley for his above and beyond efforts in Bern, including arranging the “Kids’ Club” and taking some conference participants “river swimming.” We also owe Harley a great big thank you for arranging and sponsoring the final night’s dinner cruise in the Alps!
Finally, many, many thanks to our sponsors, MSI, Ivey Business School, AMA, and most especially University of Bern and IMU Marketing. We could not have done it without you.
The pictures below highlight some fantastic parts of Bern, and the conference itself.
Uzma and Ajay accept one of our best paper awards 
Jared accepts one of our Best Paper Awards 
Femke accepts the Consumer Research in Practice Award 
Wayne and Harley entertaining the lunch crowd 
Harley singing along! 
The three conference co-chairs kick off the first night reception 
Harley and June in the calm before the conference storm! 
Barbara Kahn outlining MSI’s new directions 
Marc Langenbrink, CEO of Mercedes-Benz Switzerland 
Lovely Bern 
Sunset Selfie 
We held a non-traditional Meet the Editors session 
Past Chair of Programming Dip! 
Co-Chair Wayne and friends