The Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP) Annual Conference will convene from March 26 to March 29, 2026 in San Diego, California! The SCP conference remains a vital hub for scholars invested in consumer research and in advancing the field of consumer psychology in our global society.
Conference Team
Tracy Rank-Christman
Co-chair
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Sonja Prokopec
Co-Chair
Essec Business School, Singapore
Anthony Salerno
Co-Chair
Vanderbilt University
Chethana Achar
Doctoral Consortium Co-Chair
Northwestern University
Andrea Luangrath
Doctoral Consortium Co-Chair
University of Iowa
Quick Links
This year’s conference theme is “Cultivating Connections: Building a Flourishing Community Through Kindness, Compassion, and Respect.”
This year’s theme—Cultivating Connections—is a call to action and a celebration of what’s possible when we prioritize kindness, lead with compassion, and treat each other with respect. A central goal of this year’s gathering is to build a thriving community. We aim to support scholars, across all career stages, as they create meaningful connections, foster friendships, and collaborate with others.
Cultivating Connections has the potential to shape the future of consumer psychology by encouraging more constructive and empathetic feedback in professional interactions (e.g., review, talks, mentoring), by strengthening networks that support career development, and by inspiring research that serves as a force for good in both the marketplace and society.
This conference theme is participatory and reaches beyond scholarly presentations to introduce programming to bring scholars together through inclusive engagement. One way we’ll do this is through the introduction of “Cultivating Connections” sessions. These sessions will consist of activities and events that are geared towards connection by having people engage in a more holistic and meaningful way. More information about these sessions will be provided later this summer.
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 Overall Special Session, Best Overall Working Paper, and Best Paper exemplifying the Conference Theme.
Doctoral Consortium
A full-day Doctoral Consortium will precede the main conference on Thursday, March 26, 2026. The event will be co-chaired by Chethana Achar and Andrea Luangrath. The consortium welcomes all doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows, with further details to be announced separately.
Submission Instructions
Submission Deadline
All competitive paper, special session, roundtable, and working paper submissions are due by Friday, August 15, 2025. The submission website will close on Friday, August 15, 2025, at 11:59 PM PST. Acceptance notifications will be sent by mid-November 2025.
Submissions will be taken on ExOrdo. The address for submissions is scp2026.exordo.com.
Submission Types
There are four types of submissions at SCP:
- 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.
- 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. Special session submissions will be judged according to paper fit, novelty, relevance, and completeness of the work.
- 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.
- Working Papers: Working papers report the results of research in early stages. These projects typically present preliminary results but detail ongoing research on substantive, theoretical, or methodological aspects in marketing and consumer psychology. Though working papers represent work in the early stages, the quality of the research questions and the methodological rigor should mirror those of competitive papers. Authors of accepted working papers will present their findings in the form of a poster, with exact details provided at the time of acceptance decisions.
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 3/27/26 and Saturday 3/28/26) 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.
Submission Guidelines
How to Submit a COMPETITIVE PAPER Proposal:
Competitive Paper submissions must include the following:
- The title of the paper.
- 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 accepted.
- A 75-100 word short abstract (for publication in the conference program).
- 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.
- References (APA style). References will not count against the word count of the extended abstract.
- 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 Proposal:
Special Session submissions must include the following:
- The title of the special session.
- 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.
- 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:
- 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). References will not count against the word count of the extended abstract.
- 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 Proposal:
Roundtable submissions must include the following:
- Title of the roundtable.
- A 75-100 word short abstract of the theoretical, substantive, or methodological topic discussed in the roundtable (for publication in the conference program).
- The name, contact information, and affiliation of the roundtable organizer.
- The names and affiliations of all the panelists who have agreed to participate in the roundtable if the proposal is accepted.
- A 750-1,000 word extended abstract describing:
- a) The theoretical, substantive, or methodological topic to be discussed during the session.
- b) The goal of the session (e.g., proposing future research avenues on a topic, debating a new data analysis or data collection method, etc.).
- c) A summary list of the questions to be discussed with the panelists.
- d) The broader audience that the roundtable aims to attract and how the audience will be engaged.
How to Submit a WORKING PAPER:
Working paper submissions must include the following:
- The title of the working paper.
- 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 working paper is accepted.
- A 75-100 word short abstract (for publication in the conference program).
- A 750-1,000 word extended abstract that summarizes the motivation, conceptualization, methodology, and major findings (for evaluation by reviewers).
- References (APA style). References will not count against the word count of the extended abstract.
- 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.
Super Connectors
On a final note, this year, SCP is looking for volunteers at various career levels to be a part of the Super Connectors Squad. One of our main goals of this conference is to ensure that everyone feels welcomed, included, and valued in this community. If you feel that you are someone who is well connected and feels comfortable in social environments, with fostering connections, and with meeting new community members, you are an SCP Superconnector! We need you!! Please volunteer to be a part of the Super Connectors Squad by emailing us at chairs@myscp.org.