ARC: Connections: ELMAR: Posting

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Call for papers

Consumer Brand Relationships Conference
June 4-6, 2012
Boston, United States

According to the AMA definition, the creation and management of customer relationships is fundamental to marketing. The discipline boasts a significant tradition in the study of business-to-business relationships, and attention in the past decade has expanded to the relationships that form between consumers and their brands. Marketers have a significant interest in brand relationships: what they are, why they form, what effects they have, how they can be measured, how they are strengthened and how they can be destroyed. As the recent Handbook of Brand Relationships (2009) and Consumer-Brand Relationships: Insights for Theory and Practice (forthcoming, 2012) attest, consumer-brand relationships stand as a vibrant research area with roots that span across theoretical disciplines and research traditions. Still, brand relationship theory is in its early stages, and there remains much to be learned.

This is a conference for those with interest in consumers’ brand relationships, with equal relevance for academic researchers and marketing practitioners alike. The goal of this event is to advance knowledge about consumer-brand relationships by disseminating new research, sharing best company practices, and encouraging the evolution of new research ideas and themes. We invite rigorous and theoretically and/or practically useful papers that address issues related to the art and science of consumer-brand relationships. Research that connects with this year’s conference theme, “The What and ‘So What’ of Brand Relationships,” will be given particular consideration, as will work exploring new theoretical perspectives for understanding people’s relationships with their brands:

• Brand Relationships on the Web: Brand relationships in digital and virtual worlds, Brand relationships and social media, Relationship co-creation
• The ‘Social Side’ of Brand Relationships: Brand communities, Cultural differences in relationship behaviors, Social identity and brands, Societal effects of brand relationships, Relationships with cause brands
• Extreme Brand Relationships involving brand advocates and brand antagonists, anti-brand movements
• Vices, Addictions, Counterfeits, and other Dysfunctional Brand Relationships
• Brand Relationships in the Health Care Domain
• Consumers’ Relationships with Financial Products and Services
• People’s Relationships with Celebrities and Entertainment Brands
• Marketplace Effects of Brand Relationships: Empirical models exploring relationship effects on mindshare metrics, marketing performance indicators such as share and sales, and shareholder value; Links between CLV and brand relationship equity
• Managing Brand Relationships: Relationship-building strategies, Relationship-based market segmentation, How brand factors such as personality and brand mythology affect brand relationships, CRM enhancements and critiques, Building relationship-sensitive corporate cultures, Brand relationship metrics and dashboards

We encourage Completed Papers, Works-in-progress, Posters, and Roundtable Discussion proposals reflecting a range of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches to understanding, creating, nurturing, managing, and leveraging brand relationships.

The conference provides an ideal opportunity for accomplished scholars and practitioners, as well as young faculty members and Ph.D. students to share and discuss their most recent high quality work with other experts in this research field. Depending on the quantity and quality of accepted papers, an edited book is also planned.

Important Dates, Deadlines and Information

• Conference Dates: June 4-6, 2012
• Submission Deadline: January 15, 2012
• Notification of Acceptance: February 20, 2012
• Early Registration Deadline and Fees: $425 (if registered by March 15, 2012)
• Late Registration Deadline and Fees: $495
• Special Student Rate: $325 (by March 15, 2012)/ $395 after
• Conference Location: Simmons School of Management, Boston, Massachusetts USA

The registration fee includes attendance to the conference, welcome reception, breakfasts, lunches, coffee breaks and conference material. Tickets to a gala conference dinner and other entertainment will be made available at time of registration.

Contributor Commitments

At least one author of each accepted paper/proposal/poster must attend the conference and present the work.

By submitting a paper all authors agree to provide thoughtful, quality reviews of up to three papers.

Authors may serve as lead author and presenter on only one submission: a submission limit of two contributions per author applies.

Conference Chairs and Contact Information

• Michael Breazeale, Indiana University Southeast, USA; mbreazea@ius.edu
• Susan Fournier, Boston University, USA; fournism@bu.edu
• Jill Avery, Simmons College, USA; jill.avery@simmons.edu
• Marc Fetscherin, Rollins College; mfetscherin@rollins.edu

All submission and program-related queries, e-mail Michael Breazeale at mbreazea@ius.edu. All administrative questions (e.g., hotel, payment, registration), e-mail Jill Avery at jill.avery@simmons.edu.

For more information, please visit our conference website on www.consumer-brand-relationships.com

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