Track Descriptions and Track Chairs
1. Consumer Behaviour
This track examines how consumers evaluate, use, and respond to products, services, or ideas. We welcome submissions on a range of topics, including but not limited to: consumer culture theory, attitude formation and change, automatic processing, cognitive and affective determinants of behaviour, consumer-brand relationships, consumer choices and consumption behaviour, family and group decision processes, persuasion and messaging appeals, pricing effects, and public policy issues. Submissions are invited independent on whether they are empirical and conceptual, as long as they have the potential to inform marketing theory and practice.
Track Chairs:
Sally Rao Hill (University of Adelaide)
Karen Fernandez (University of Auckland)
Lauren Gurrieri (RMIT University)
2. Customer Engagement
Customer engagement has attracted prolific academic and practitioner interest in recent years. Closely aligned with the theme of the conference, this track brings together contributions advancing our theoretical understanding and the managerial management of customer and actor engagement. Both conceptual and empirical submissions examining engagement are invited. Topics may include, but not limited to, new perspectives and measurement approaches, engagement across business and consumer contexts, as well as across various levels of aggregation and abstraction.
Track Chairs:
Jill Sweeney (University of Western Australia)
Sanjit Roy (University of Western Australia)
3. Digital Marketing and Social Media
Technology has infiltrated every area of marketing; in every industry sector. As such, this track comprises papers on a wide range of marketing issues. We welcome papers utilising a wide range of methodologies, including Netnography, Big Data Analytics, Click-Stream Modelling, as well as more traditional approaches. What every paper will have in common is a discussion on the disruptive impact of technology on consumer behaviour, and/or marketing strategy and tactics. An example of some disruptive technologies are Search Engines, Social Media, Mobile, Virtual Reality, Neuromarketing, the Internet of Things, and many others.
Track Chairs:
Paul Harrigan (University of Western Australia)
Torgeir Aleti (RMIT University)
4. Service Research
In increasingly service-based economy, both researchers and practitioners note the significant contribution of service worldwide. This track seeks submissions related to service and service research topics. Manuscripts may be conceptual or empirical in nature and may use diverse methodological approaches. Topics appropriate for this track could include, but are not limited to: customer co-creation of value, the role of (wearable) technology in service settings, customer journey and customer experience in an omni-channel environment, service design in service encounters, customer/frontline employee interactions, transformative service research and customer wellbeing topics, as well as service innovations.
Track Chairs:
Matthew Alexander (University of Strathclyde)
Elina Jaakkola (University of Turku)
5. Marketing Communications
Marketing communications aim to stimulate demand or behaviour change via the creation of awareness and preferences for market offerings or ideas. Marketing communications and advertising tools can be directed at buyers, users, distributors, employees, and others in order to achieve a variety of communication and marketing performance objectives. Sales promotion, one tool of marketing communications, involves the use of incentive- oriented tools to stimulate sales such as price promotions, contests, loyalty programs, dealer incentives, cooperative promotions, and point of sale promotions. This track particularly invites papers that investigate innovative theories and practices in marketing communications and advertising, and performance evaluation.
Track Chairs:
Mike Reid (RMIT University)
David Waller (University of Technology Sydney)
6. Product and Brand Management
This track invites conceptual and empirical papers that advance the theoretical and managerial knowledge of products and brands. Topics include, but are not limited to, current and emerging issues in brand management, factors that impact the success of brand innovations, the role of co-creation including the development of new products or services, how the brand helps create a relationship between a company’s product and the customer, and strategic initiatives that are aimed at giving a brand a competitive advantage.
Track Chairs:
Jay Weerawardena (University of Queensland)
Ravi Pappu (University of Queensland)
7. Marketing Education
In times of change (e.g., growth in global job opportunities, variations in government policies on education, technological disruptions, industry concerns on student employability), students increasingly demand learning experiences that are resource effective yet rewarding and impactful. This requires marketing educators to adapt and innovate the learning journey with students, industry partners, and peers. Papers submitted to this track can be on any topics related to the education of the next generation of marketers, including but not limited to flipped classroom, learning co-creation, learner engagement, work integrated learning, e-learning, peer-to-peer learning, the impact of social media, and the global context of marketing education.
Track Chairs:
Vinh Lu (Australian National University)
Joanne Ho (Singapore University of Social Sciences)
8. Business Networks, Distribution & Retailing
This track invites papers contributing to knowledge and practice related to business networks, distribution and retailing. Business-to-business interactions underlying these themes encompass many of the key challenges facing companies in an increasingly competitive environment. Contributions may include, but are not limited to, interactions and transactions between businesses and business networks. Furthermore, this track will consider all traditional and innovative aspects of retailing and distribution including retail assortment management, retail store location and design, retail operations and retail customer support services, shopper behaviour, store branding, experiential retailing and store atmospherics, multichannel retailing, e-retailing, and ethics and corporate social responsibility issues related to retailing.
Track Chairs:
Michael Kleinaltemkamp (Free University Berlin)
Jack Caudeaux (University of NSW)
9. Marketing Analytics, Methods and Modelling
This track invites methodological and analytics papers dealing with academic and practice-oriented marketing research and modelling. The track is open to both qualitative and quantitative approaches as well as traditional and new data sources. Topics can range from those that examine the theoretical and managerial value of research information to data collection, data base management, instrument development and testing, qualitative methods, quantitative and analytic methods for measurement, and model testing.
Track Chairs:
Chris Dubelaar (Deakin University)
10. Social Marketing
For social marketers, impact can be communicated as soon as successful projects are in field. When delivered well, social marketing impacts individuals and their families and can deliver social and economic change benefitting both individuals targeted for change and the wider community. The social marketing track seeks submissions showcasing social marketing’s ability to impact individuals, families, practices and wider society. Both conceptual and empirical papers are welcome.
Track Chairs:
Sharyn Rundle-Thiele (Griffith University)
Rory Mulcahy (University of Sunshine Coast)
11. Marketing Strategy and Innovation
This track invites submissions related to both marketing strategy and innovation. Marketing strategy contributions may include, but is not limited to initiatives that are aimed at gaining competitive advantage such as new product and service development, market and other forms of learning capabilities that will facilitate such initiatives, as well as entrepreneurial marketing strategies that will enable resource-constrained firms to outperform their competitors. With prior research demonstrating that innovation is an important means to gain and sustain competitive advantage, scholars are invited to submit papers contributing to a better understanding of service processes, practices and outcomes.
Track Chairs:
Magda Nenycz-Thiel (University of South Australia)
12. Macromarketing and Public Policy
Macromarketing examines issues at the nexus of marketing and society, such as the operation of markets and marketing systems, stakeholder well-being, environmental sustainability, ethics, socio-economic development and quality-of-life. Macromarketers are attentive to important social problems, how they are affected by marketing and how society influences the conduct of marketing. This entails a consideration of both the opportunities and shortcoming of marketing, whether intended or unintended. The interests of public policy scholars nicely dovetail those of macromarketers. In addition, marketing and public policy scholars examine the role of marketing and its relation to policy decisions and regulatory actions.
Track Chairs:
Lucie Ozanne (University of Canterbury)
Ann-Marie Kennedy (University of Canterbury)
13. Food, Wine and Leisure Marketing
Food and wine are central to Australia’s economic growth and to its social and cultural fabric. Furthermore, sport and leisure contribute socially, culturally and psychologically to the fabric of nations who see recreational involvement as critical to health, well-being, and quality-of-life. Submissions to this track are welcome across the broad base of sport and leisure marketing, including both the marketing of, and through, sport (at all levels of engagement); as well as the marketing of leisure and recreational pursuits from all stakeholders.
Track Chairs:
Larry Lockshin (University of South Australia)
Armando Corsi (University of South Australia)