2024 SCP Conference – Call for Papers

The annual Winter Conference of the Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP) will be held from March 7 – 9, 2024 at the Renaissance Nashville Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee – the Music City!  The SCP conference provides significant opportunities for interaction among scholars interested in consumer research and in advancing the discipline of consumer psychology in a global society.

Two popular themes have recently emerged in consumer research: mental well-being and emerging technology (e.g., AI, ChatGPT).  However, these two topics are often presented as being at odds with one another – from the negative effect social media can have on mental health to the use of generative AI to cheat, as well as the risk automation poses to jobs and creative content development.  But might there exist opportunities to harness emerging technology for the benefit of consumer well-being? For SCP 2024, we hope to bring together scholars conducting research on consumer well-being, emerging technology, and work at the intersection of these two key current issues so that our community of consumer scholars can have a voice in this important conversation. Some topics/approaches may include:

• Social media and its positive/negative consequences for consumers
• Generative AI and its uses within consumer contexts
• Automation and its role in consumer contexts
• Consumer willingness to adopt emerging technology
• Mental well-being as a focus for consumer-centric research
• Consumers’ physical well-being and its relationship with emerging technology (e.g., fitness apps)
• Research using generative AI, automation, Machine Learning, and other emerging technology as part of its methodology
• Opportunities for emerging technology to assist marginalized populations
• Societal bias in consumer-facing AI and machine learning
• Text analytics as a tool for consumer insight and well-being

All submissions will be welcome for SCP, including those that may not focus on mental well-being or technology, specifically.  However, we will be awarding three special awards at the conference: 1) Best Paper on Consumer Well-Being, 2) Best Paper Integrating Emerging Technology in a Consumer Context, 3) Best Paper with Positive Societal Impact.  We see this conference as a great opportunity for scholars already working in these areas to share their research as well as  those who are interested in starting in this space.

Types of Submissions 

 There are four types of submissions at SCP: 

1. 1. Competitive Papers:
      Competitive papers constitute advanced-stage work and address substantive, methodological, or theoretical topics in marketing and consumer psychology. We will be grouping four individual papers into 75-minute sessions. Authors will have 15 minutes to present their work, followed by a few minutes for questions and discussion.

   2. Special Sessions:
      Special sessions focus on a specific area of research. Submissions should share similar theoretical or methodological bases, or they may approach the same research question from different perspectives. Each session is 75 minutes and should include either 1) four papers without a discussant, or 2) three papers with an expert discussant. If a discussant is present, they should be an expert in the topic area and not an author of any of the featured papers. The special session chair is expected to lead the session. Special session chairs are responsible for submitting all materials by the deadline and ensuring that all session presenters commit to attending the conference if accepted and presenting during the session. Preference will be accorded to paper fit, novelty, relevance, and completeness of the work.

   3. Roundtables:
      Roundtables aim to bring together researchers interested in a specific topic in marketing and consumer psychology. Roundtable discussions cover recent developments, integrate ongoing conversations, and generate new ideas and avenues for future research on a topic of interest. Roundtable proposals will be assessed on the richness and quality of the proposed conversation, robust structure, readiness to foster stimulating discussions, and ability to generate interest from a broad audience.

   4. Posters:
      Posters report the results of a research project in its early stages. These projects typically present preliminary results but detail ongoing research on substantive, theoretical, or methodological aspects in marketing and consumer psychology. Though posters represent work in the early stages, the quality of the research questions and the methodological rigor should mirror those of individual papers. Authors of accepted posters will present their findings in the form of a poster, with exact details provided at the time of acceptance decisions. This year, the poster session co-chairs are Ryan Elder (Brigham Young University, rselder@byu.edu), Hristina Nikolova (Boston College, hristina.dzhogleva@bc.edu), and Eugenia Wu (University of Pittsburgh, ecwu@katz.pitt.edu).

   Each SCP participant may present in no more than two sessions. When submitting to this conference, you must agree to be available at any time on both days of the conference (i.e., Friday 3/7/24 and Saturday 3/8/24) to present your work. If you will not be available on one of the days, please arrange for a co-author to present. We are unable to consider date/time change requests for presentations unless a presenter has been inadvertently scheduled to deliver two presentations during the same time slot. 

   SCP will be a fully in-person conference. While the conference will be in-person, we will do our best to live stream the Presidential Address and the Plenary Session. However, due to technical constraints, conference sessions are not able to be live-streamed. Therefore, if you submit your work to the conference, please ensure that you or a co-author will be able to attend the conference to present it in-person.

   Submission Guidelines

   How to Submit a COMPETITIVE PAPER:
   Competitive Paper submissions must include the following: 

   1. The title of the paper. 
   2. The name, contact information, and affiliation of the author(s). Please indicate the author order and whether each author will serve as the corresponding author, presenter or both. At least one author of each paper must agree to present the paper if the paper is accepted. 
   3. A 75-100 word short abstract (for publication in the conference program). 
   4. A 750-1,000 word extended abstract that summarizes the motivation, conceptualization, methodology, and major findings (for evaluation by reviewers). Abstracts should include the number of studies completed, study procedures, and summary statistics so that reviewers can judge the completeness and quality of the research. Incomplete or vague abstracts in which the completeness and quality cannot be ascertained will be rejected. 
   5. References (APA style: see examples here). References will not count against the word count of the extended abstract.
   6. Figures and Tables. Authors are welcome to use figures and tables in addition to the extended abstract. Figures and tables will not count against the word count of the extended abstract.

   How to Submit a SPECIAL SESSION: 
   Special Session submissions must include the following: 

   1. The title of the special session.
   2. The name, contact information, and affiliation of each author. Please indicate whether each author will serve as the corresponding author, presenter or both. At least one author of each paper must agree to present the paper if the proposal is accepted.
   3. A session proposal. To enable a blind review process, the uploaded special session proposal should not identify author names or affiliations. Initial proposal submissions should be de-identified and uploaded in pdf format. Please check the document properties to make sure your file is de-identified (File > Properties, and remove author information in the “Description” tab). Proposals should include:
      1. • A 500 word overview describing the session’s objective, topics to be covered, intended audience, stage of completion of each paper, and how the session contributes to the field of marketing and consumer psychology.
         • The title of each presentation (up to four presentations may be included).
         • A 75-100 word short abstract of each presentation (for publication in the conference program).
         • A 750-1,000 word extended abstract of each presentation (for evaluation by reviewers). Abstracts should include the number of studies completed, the study procedures, and summary statistics so that reviewers can judge the completeness and quality of the research. Incomplete or vague abstracts in which the completeness and quality cannot be ascertained will be rejected.
         • If the session features a discussant, please provide a description of the goals and plan for the discussion in the submission.
         • References (APA style: see examples here). References will not count against the word count of the extended abstract. o Figures and Tables. Authors are welcome to use figures and tables in addition to the abstract. Figures and tables will not count against the word count of the abstract.

   How to Submit a ROUNDTABLE: 
   Roundtable submissions must include the following: 

   1. Title of the roundtable.
   2. A 75-100 word short abstract of the theoretical, substantive, or methodological topic discussed in the roundtable (for publication in the conference program). 
   3. The name, contact information, and affiliation of the roundtable organizer. 
   4. The names and affiliations of all the panelists who have agreed to participate in the roundtable if the proposal is accepted.
   5. A 750-1,000 word extended abstract describing:
   • • The theoretical, substantive, or methodological topic to be discussed during the session;
     • The goal of the session (e.g., proposing future research avenues on a topic, debating a new data analysis or data collection method, etc.);
     • A summary list of the questions to be discussed with the panelists;
     • The broader audience that the roundtable aims to attract and how the audience will be engaged.

   
   How to Submit a POSTER: 
   Poster submissions must include the following: 

   1. The title of the poster.
   2. The name, contact information, and affiliation of each author. Please indicate the author order and whether each author will serve as the corresponding author, presenter or both. At least one author must agree to present the poster if the poster is accepted.
   3. A 75-100 word short abstract (for publication in the conference program).
   4. A 750-1,000 word extended abstract that summarizes the motivation, conceptualization, methodology, and major findings (for evaluation by reviewers).
   5. References (APA style: see examples here). References will not count against the word count of the extended abstract.
   6. Figures and Tables. Authors are encouraged to use figures/graphs and tables in addition to the abstract. Figures and tables will not count against the word count.

   Submission Deadline

   All competitive paper, special session, roundtable, and poster submissions are due by August 15, 2023. The submission website will close on August 15, 2023, at 11:59 PST. We will send a notification of acceptances by mid-November 2023.  Submission information and login information will be available through the submission portal.

   Conference Submission Website: https://scp2024.exordo.com/

   DOCTORAL SYMPOSIUM

   There will be a full-day Doctoral Symposium before the main conference on Thursday, March 7, 2024. The event will be co-chaired by Kelly Herd (University of Connecticut) and Aner Sela (University of Florida). The symposium will be open to all doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows. Relevant details will be announced separately.