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Call for Papers: 2020 AMA Winter Academic Conference

Call for Papers: 2020 AMA Winter Academic Conference

Consumer and Firms in a Global World

AMA academic events are built to surround you with peers who understand your research challenges and provide access to top thought leaders who can help you find solutions. Whether you’re an emerging scholar making your mark or a seasoned academic pushing the boundaries of traditional thinking, we have you covered with events ready to help you advance your career.

The deadline for submissions is September 3, 2019


Conference Co-Chairs  |  Tracks  |  Submission Information  |  Ethics


Conference Co-Chairs

Bryan Lukas

University of Manchester

O.C. Ferrell

Auburn University


Conference Tracks and Associate Editors

Marketing Strategy and Implementation

Amalesh Sharma, Texas A&M University and Simos Chari, University of Manchester

  • Machine Learning and Marketing Decision
  • Consumer Experience
  • Marketing in Healthcare
  • Innovation at Grass root level
  • C-suit and sustainability
  • Marketing and Sustainability
  • Marketing Strategy for consumer well-being
  • Supply network and business decision complexity
  • Retail marketing and Field Experiments
  • Marketing at bottom of Pyramid
  • Causal models and marketing outcome
  • Marketing strategy formulation processes
  • Intrafirm complexity and marketing strategy
  • Strategic marketing in dynamic environments
  • Marketing strategy and performance implications
  • Marketing strategy program decisions
  • Marketing strategy and decision making  
  • Marketing capabilities, strategy and performance
  • Research methods for strategic marketing 
  • Marketing strategy and digitalization
  • Social media marketing mix strategies

Marketing Performance and Metrics 

Neil Morgan, Indiana University and Constantine Katsikeas, Leeds University

Sub-Themes:

  • Identifying key aspects of marketing performance and associated metrics
  • Marketing-related drivers of different aspects of marketing performance
  • Performance trade-offs of different marketing investments and actions
  • Time-frames in performance outcomes of marketing actions
  • Marketing performance assessment in practice
  • Performance assessment system design and outcomes
  • Marketing-accounting-finance interface
  • Risk-reward trade-offs in marketing investments and actions
  • Evaluating and selecting among marketing investment and action options
  • Assessing marketing metric use

International and Cross-Cultural Marketing

Saeed Samiee, University of Tulsa and Brian Chabowski, University of Tulsa

This track invites papers that address all issues and activities relevant to marketing across national boundaries. Topics addressing international marketing strategy or its individual elements, cross-cultural/national aspects of marketing or buyer behavior, and international marketing in the digital age (e.g., international eCommerce) are particularly welcome. Other topics of interest include international market assessment, selection, and entry strategies; exporting in developing and emerging market contexts; international marketing in an anti-globalization era and political shifts in certain key markets, as well as the potential impact of contextual shifts in global branding and adaptation/standardization of international marketing programs and importing; international relationship marketing and global account management; origin-related considerations (e.g., products, brands, liability of foreignness); product innovation in an era of distributed R&D structure; international strategic marketing alliances/joint ventures; and cross-cultural marketing research issues. Both conceptual and empirical works, as well as qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method research approaches are welcome.

  • Exporting, global distribution
  • International advertising
  • International pricing
  • Brand origin
  • Country-of-origin
  • Standardization/adaptation
  • Culture
  • Global consumer culture
  • Global branding
  • International entry modes
  • International digital marketing
  • International services
  • International relationship marketing

Sustainability, Social Responsibility, and Ethics 

OC Ferrell, Auburn University and Linda Ferrell, Auburn University

Sustainability, social Responsibility and ethics are important in developing stakeholder relationships. Sustainability is an important part of social responsibility along with consumer protection, philanthropy, legal responsibilities and social issues. Marketing ethics includes values, norms as well as behavior that could be judged right or wrong in a marketing context. All issues related to marketing and public policy are also appropriate for this track.

  • Ethical culture
  • Ethical products
  • Corporate governance
  • Environmental regulation
  • Stakeholder orientation
  • Green marketing strategies
  • Social marketing
  • Global warming
  • Ethical misconduct

Public Policy and Macromarketing

Mark Peterson, University of Wyoming and Magda Hassan, University of Manchester

Macromarketing:

  • Quality of life
  • Ethics
  • Sustainability
  • Marketing systems
  • Marketing history
  • Developing countries

Public Policy

  • Public interest
  • Laws and regulations
  • Food marketing
  • Financial decision-making
  • Social and micro-entrepreneurship 

Customer Engagement and CRM

Matti Jaakkola, University of Manchester and Sebastian Hohenberg, University of Texas

This track invites conceptual and empirical papers that help understand how companies can manage their customer relationships and customer engagement in ways that benefit their performance. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Gaining customer insights from increasingly complex customer journeys
  • New data and new tools for customer management (e.g., virtual reality, augmented reality)
  • Customer engagement through automated service interactions (e.g., chatbots, robots, affective computing)
  • Managing customer experience and engagement in B2C markets
  • Managing customer experience and engagement in B2B markets
  • Customer experience management in a globalized world
  • Customer management for emerging markets
  • Using customer insights for managerial decision-making
  • Key metrics for understanding customer engagement and customer value
  • Dark side of customer engagement

Industrial Marketing and Supply Chain Management

Daekwan Kim, Florida State University and Ruey-Jer “Bryan” Jean, National Chengchi University, Taiwan

This track invites research papers that consider marketing strategies to develop, manage, and leverage various buyer-seller relationships in the globalized market. In keeping with the conference theme of “Consumers and Firms in a Global World,” papers and special session proposals focusing on guiding managers and researchers in the study of B2B relationships that serve consumers globally are especially welcomed.

  • Global supply chains and consumer products
  • Distribution channels to serve consumers globally
  • Global interfirm collaborative relationships
  • Role of new marketing environments (e.g., information technology
  • Social networks
  • Globalization, and/or trade tensions) in managing these relationships
  • Linkages between 4 P’s and relational strategies
  • Emerging channels and global B2B relationships
  • Human nature of interfirm relationships,
  • Research methods pertaining to B2B marketing

Sales Management and Personal Selling

Doug Hughes, Michigan State University and Wyatt Schrock, Michigan State University

  • Salesforce technology (including artificial intelligence, social media, etc.)
  • International selling and sales management
  • Relationship marketing
  • Sales manager leadership (behaviors, styles)
  • Ethical issues in sales
  • Salesforce organization/structure
  • Salesperson motivation (including compensation)
  • Intra-organizational relationships and functional interfaces (e.g., sales-service interface, sales-marketing interface)
  • Methodological issues in sales force research
  • Psychological issues in selling and sales management

Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing Communications

John Ford, Old Dominion University and Kate Pounders, University of Texas

  • IMC
  • Gender issues in advertising
  • Advertising and ROI
  • Cross-platform strategies
  • Neuromarketing and advertising affect
  • Electronic word-of-mouth
  • Cross-cultural/international advertising issues
  • Crowdfunding
  • Advertising methodology
  • Big data and advertising
  • Segmentation
  • Advertising creativity
  • Advertising agency strategy
  • Effective strategies: traditional vs. digital and social media

Consumer Psychology and Behavior

Rick Bagozzi, University of Michigan and Ayalla Ruvio, Michigan State University

This track includes services and service marketing, online user experience (UX), experiential marketing, and customer relationship management, online and offline.

  • Consumer vices and virtues consumer responses to corporate social responsibility and irresponsibility
  • Emotions and consumer decision making
  • Brand love, hate, coolness, and other emotional aspects of brands
  • Brand communities and other collective aspects of consumption
  • Qualitative research in consumer behavior
  • Sharing, giving and prosocial behavior in consumption
  • New developments in psychological underpinnings of brands
  • Consumption as facilitators or inhibitors of individuality and interpersonal relationships 
  • Self-brand connection, incongruity, disidentification, and disordered relations in brand decisions
  • The bottom of the pyramid, co-creation, and presuming behaviors

Social Media, AI, and Digital Marketing

Koen Pauwels, Northeastern University and Yufei Zhang, University of Alabama at Birmingham

This track aims attention toward consumers by exploring how marketing can improve quality of life, self-perception and even actual physical health.

  • New technologies (AI, AR, VR, etc.) in marketing
  • Social media and brands
  • Social impact of social media (citizenship, elections, social causes)
  • Consumers and social media platforms
  • Online customer reviews and consumer decision
  • Fake online reviews and source credibility
  • Big data in the digital world
  • Online privacy issues in social media
  • Marketing analytics and machine learning in the digital world
  • Relationship marketing in social media
  • Text mining in the digital world
  • Digital marketing and social media management
  • Mobile marketing and new technologies
  • Integrated channel strategies (multi-channel and omni-channel)
  • E-tailers’ marketing strategy to succeed 

Market Research

Joe Hair, University of South Alabama and Marko Sarstedt, Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg, Germany

  • Cognitive analytics for structured and unstructured data
  • Behavioral and recommender system analytics
  • Spatial and mobile data analytics
  • Real-time event-based analytics
  • Social network analysis on social media
  • Machine learning and deep learning marketing applications
  • Sentiment analysis for e-commerce
  • Sensory market research
  • New developments in composite-based structural equation modeling
  • Conjoint analysis: A powerhouse that evolves
  • Interdisciplinary perspectives on market research (e.g., biology)
  • From experience: Case studies on advances in market research
  • Hybrid qualitative/quantitative approaches
  • Neuroscience and physiological measurement
  • Online ethnographic methods
  • Accessing digital data – sources and techniques

Marketing Analytics and Big Data: Causal Inferences, Endogeneity and Empirical Generalizations in Marketing

Ahmad (Anto) Daryanto, Lancaster University and Florian Dost, University of Manchester

This track expands the perspective of marketing research to include its impact on society, consumer communities and culture at large, including cross-cultural insights.

  • Causality tests and diagnostic
  • Non-linear biases
  • Self-selection
  • Meta-analytics biases
  • Instrumental variables
  • Instrument-free approaches
  • Regression-discontinuity designs
  • Field experiments
  • Training on advanced methods for future marketing scholars (e.g., PhD students)
  • Other Methods and related topics (e.g., machine learning, information theory)

Product Development and Innovation

Roger Calantone, Michigan State University and Erkan Ozkaya California, Polytechnic University

Adapting to the rapidly changing markets and customer preferences of today’s world, requires fully utilizing marketing and innovation, arguably the most important functions of a firm. This track focuses on the role of marketing at all stages of innovation such as the (1) beginning of the innovation process to (e.g. exploring market potentials and customer needs), (2) development process (e.g. getting feedback from the customer, and (3) commercialization process (e.g. marketing the product). The interplay between marketing and innovation poses several challenges. This track aims to address these challenges and provide solutions for researchers and practitioners. 

  • Marketing strategies for radical/incremental innovations
  • Creating innovations with consumers
  • Enhancing innovations through marketing capabilities
  • Marketing innovations in emerging markets
  • Role of marketing in developing sustainable innovations
  • Market Orientated new product/service development
  • Branding product/service innovations
  • Interaction between product design and marketing
  • Market-based innovations in the changing world
  • Marketing and R&D interaction/integration/interface
  • Marketing technological/process innovations
  • Marketing innovation and firm performance
  • Managing product portfolio and innovation
  • Consumer response to firm/product/service innovation
  • Sales innovation as a competitive advantage
  • Retail innovation and firm performance
  • Consumer innovation perceptions
  • Market knowledge competence
  • Marketing’s role in the diffusion of innovation
  • New methods and methodological issues in innovation research
  • New trends and ideas in innovation
  • Marketing’s role in open innovation
  • Service innovation and new service development
  • Theory development in innovation research

Strategic Branding and Brand Management

Wayne Hoyer, University of Texas – Austin and Omar Merlo, Imperial College

This track invites conceptual and empirical papers that help understand how companies can manage their brands in ways that benefit customers and firm performance. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Customers’ relationships with brands
  • The impact of new technologies on branding
  • Online brand engagement, networks, and social media
  • Brand loyalty, its antecedents, and consequences
  • Global branding
  • Internal branding, personal branding, and employee engagement
  • Brand ethics
  • Creating, managing, and measuring brand equity
  • Brands and customer experience
  • Branding and marketing communications
  • Managing brand crises and failures
  • Brands co-creation

Service Science and Retailing  

Mike Brady, Florida State University and Clay Voorhees, University of Alabama


Submission Types

All submissions should be made electronically via the AMA’s online submission management system (Abstract Central). If you have submitted to an AMA academic conference in the last year, you should be able to use the same username and password. The deadline for submission is September 3, 2019.

Competitive Papers 

Manuscripts addressing substantive or theoretical topics are sought for competitive paper sessions.

It is mandatory that at least one author of all accepted papers register for, and present the paper at, the conference. Submission of the same (or substantially overlapping) manuscript(s) to multiple themes is not permitted. As a reminder, papers are reviewed following a double-blind process; reviewers will not know who authored the papers, nor will authors know the names of their reviewers.

Format and Style for Competitive Papers:

Prepare and submit electronic documents in Microsoft Word with the text of up to 3,600 words (approximately six pages) for review; references do not count against the word limit. Authors also have the option of including one table summarizing results and/or one figure (these also do not count against the word limit). [Please note that submissions with text longer than 3,600 words will not be reviewed].

In addition to the manuscript, please prepare brief descriptions clearly stating your (1) Research Question, (2) Method and Data used (not applicable for nonempirical papers), (3) Key Contributions to the academy (marketing discipline) and the practice (marketers and managers), and (4) Summary of Findings. This should not be included in the same document with the manuscript; rather, these descriptions will be pasted in the appropriate spaces during the online submission process. 

To assure a blind review, authors must avoid revealing their identities in the body or reference section of the paper. Authors should do the following:

  • Do not include a front page with author-identifying information.
  • Remove the author identifying information from the document’s file properties. In Word, this can be done by using/clicking on the “Properties” feature (use Word’s Help resource for further details on how to use it).

At the time of submission via Abstract Central, the submitter will be asked to provide complete contact information for all authors including name, mailing address, phone number, and email. All details, including the physical mailing addresses, are required.

Confirmation that your paper was submitted successfully will be sent via email to the submitter.

Authors of accepted competitive papers have the option of publishing either an extended abstract or a full paper in the conference proceedings. Choosing to publish an Extended Abstract gives authors the option to submit the paper elsewhere for publication after the conference.

Posters

Poster sessions provide an opportunity to share research in the working stage, i.e., with at least part of the data having been collected and analyzed, but not necessarily ready for submission to a journal. They are presented as part of poster sessions. Poster sessions can be particularly useful for getting input at intermediate stages of a research project. All poster abstract submissions must be directed to only one theme. (See details about themes below).

By submitting a poster abstract, the author affirms that he/she will register for and appear at the conference to participate in the poster session.

Format and Submission Process for Posters:

Prepare and submit an extended abstract in Microsoft Word format.  Poster submissions must include the title and an extended abstract of 750-1000 words plus selected references. The abstract should summarize the research, including the conceptual framework, description of the method, data, results, and conclusions. Authors also have the option of including one table summarizing results and/or one figure (these also do not count against the word limit).

In addition to the manuscript, please prepare brief descriptions clearly stating your (1) Research Question, (2) Method and Data used (not applicable for nonempirical papers), (3) Key Contributions, and (4) Summary of Findings. This should not be included in the same document with the manuscript; rather, these descriptions will be pasted in the appropriate spaces during the online submission process.  

To assure a blind review, authors must avoid revealing their identities in the body or reference section of the paper. Authors should do the following:

  • Do not include a front page with author-identifying information.
  • Remove the author identifying information from the document’s file properties. In Word, this can be done by using/clicking on the “Properties” feature (use Word’s Help resource for further details on how to use it). 

At the time of submission via Abstract Central, the submitter will be asked to provide complete contact information for all authors including name, mailing address, phone number, and email. All details, including the physical mailing addresses, are required.

Confirmation that your abstract was submitted successfully will be sent via email to the submitter.

Accepted poster authors must agree to prepare a poster for display during the session and be available to discuss your research and answer questions during the invited poster session.

Special Sessions

Anyone may organize and propose a special session, although those who are unfamiliar with AMA conference special sessions are encouraged to discuss their ideas with the conference co-chairs for developmental feedback before submitting a proposal.  Special sessions provide a good vehicle to acquaint marketing academics with new perspectives, theories, and provocative ideas, to bring diverse participants together around a common theme, or to integrate academically-minded practitioners into the conference. Sessions involving participants from multiple countries, focusing on theory development or cutting-edge research directions, and offering insights regarding academic-business partnerships for teaching or research are particularly encouraged. 

Special sessions should feature three or four presentations on a related theme. Another possibility is an interactive panel discussion among 4-6 panelists and a moderator. Other creative special session formats are encouraged, particularly those that generate attendee interaction. 

All special session proposal submissions must be directed to only one theme(see details about themes below). Proposals for special sessions should describe the topic and its importance to marketing, summarize the issues to be covered, and identify all individuals (with their qualifications) who will formally participate. Special session proposals should provide specificity regarding the purpose, format, participants, and roles in the session. AMA Academic Special Interest Groups (SIGs) may propose special sessions to the SIG Programming Theme.

Selection criteria include the general quality of the proposal, the level of interest the session is likely to generate at the conference, and the session’s relevance to the conference theme.

By submitting a special session proposal, the organizer and listed participants affirm that, if accepted, all will register for and appear at the Conference as described in the proposal. 

Format and Submission Process for Special Sessions:

Prepare and submit an extended abstract in Microsoft Word format.  Special session proposals must include the title of the session and an extended abstract of 3600 words maximum. The proposal should describe the objective of the session, its structure and general orientation, likely audience, key issues, and topics to be covered, as well as a description of why the session is likely to make an important contribution to the discipline. Also, include a brief description of each paper in the session.

The text of the special session proposal must not exceed 3600 words and should be submitted in the double-spaced format, prepared in 12-point font. Please prepare a separate description not exceeding 100 words. This should not be included in the proposal itself but will be pasted in the appropriate space during the submission process via Abstract Central.

At the time of submission via the online system, the submitter will be asked to provide complete contact information for all presenters including name, affiliation, phone number, and email as it should appear in the final program materials.

Due to the unique nature of special sessions, presenter names and information should be included in the proposal and will be noted as a part of the review process.

Confirmation that your proposal was submitted successfully will be sent via email to the submitter. Special session participants are all expected to register for the conference.


Code of Ethics

Authors submitting papers to American Marketing Association academic conferences must adhere to the following code of ethics: 

  • Submission of the same (or substantially overlapping) manuscript, special session proposal, or working paper abstract to multiple themes is not permitted.
  • Submitting authors should specify who will present papers being considered for Special Sessions or Competitive Paper presentations. An author can be listed as a presenter for no more than two submissions but can be listed as the co-author of multiple submissions. This restriction is to encourage authors to submit their best work and to allow a wider range of presenters.
  • Submissions should not already be published in any journal or publication (including online journals, books, and book chapters). Submitting authors should monitor this issue carefully.
  • Competitive Paper and Poster submissions should not include content that has been presented at earlier AMA conferences.