Cultivating Connections

Submission Deadline: Extended to August 18, 2024

Consumer psychology consistently offers ways to enrich people’s lives in meaningful and lasting ways. Whether it’s by identifying the psychological benefits of particular forms of consumption (e.g., experiential, prosocial, or social), highlighting how consumers can optimize decision-making for long-term satisfaction, or offering insights on how to increase overall well-being, our discipline holds the clues for fundamental ways in which consumers can enrich their lives.

However, our field, and much of behavioral scientific exploration more generally, is largely failing to provide these helpful and important insights to those outside our academic bubble. Our society of scholars is uniquely positioned to improve consumers’ lives, especially as society continues to evolve at a rapid pace and present new opportunities and challenges. And yet it is unclear how well we are doing this. If we have a duty to communicate our knowledge to consumers, how do we do this? Further, can we as consumer psychologists help scientists from other disciplines (e.g., the natural sciences) better communicate important findings from their own fields to the general public?

Enriching Consumer Life

• Antecedents and consequences of consumer enjoyment & well-being
• Identifying new benefits of and new tools to aid in experiential and/or joint consumption
• Using virtual reality to augment physical reality
• Cultivating consumer mindfulness
• Aiding consumer decision-making to optimize long-term well-being 
• Sustainability as a way to ensure a rich life experience for future generations 
• Brands that aid in curating an optimal consumer lifestyle (e.g., lifestyle brands)

Communicating to the Consumer

• Understanding consumer knowledge – the evolution of knowledge acquisition, knowledge structures, etc.
• Experiential learning and the marketplace (e.g., “learning by doing”)
• Using framing, nudges, and choice architecture to directly influence consumers
• Leveraging word of mouth to disseminate knowledge to the public
• Using virtual reality and/or AI to demonstrate science in action
• Engaging consumers from the start through co-creation
• Strategies for making science-based findings more approachable, understandable, and/or implementable

We welcome all submissions, regardless of their direct fit with the conference theme, across various formats, including competitive papers, special sessions, roundtables, and working papers. Outstanding contributions will be recognized with awards for Best Overall Competitive Paper, Best Competitive Paper on the Conference Theme, Best Overall Working Paper, Best Working Paper on the Conference Theme, and Best Overall Special Session.