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There are twelve tracks for the Winter 2010 Marketing Educators' Conference

1. Consumer Behavior
2. Global Marketing
3. Corporate Affairs, Social Responsibility, and Sustainability
4. Brand Marketing and Communication
5. Marketing Education
6. Business-to-Business Marketing
7. Research Methods
8. Marketing Strategy
9. Sales and Customer Relationship Management
10. Services, Service Science, and Retailing
11. Marketing and Technology
12. SIGnificant Advances among Special Interests

1. Consumer Behavior

This track invites papers and special session proposals that emphasize research reflecting a wide range of theories and methodological approaches on both traditionally important issues and emerging issues in consumer behavior. Topics may include, but are not limited to: emotional aspects of consumer decision making (including the role of emotional intelligence); consumer responses to persuasion attempts; consumer knowledge; behavioral aspects of pricing; transformative consumer research; information processing; alternative evaluation; framing and post-purchase evaluation; social, situational, and cultural influences on consumer behavior; comparative and international aspects of consumer behavior; and post modern approaches to consumer behavior and conspicuous consumption. The application and extension of existing theories from related disciplines, as well as newly developed theories at the conceptual development stage, are encouraged.

2. Global Marketing

This track invites papers and special session proposals that address a variety of global marketing issues. Topics appropriate for this track may include, but are not limited to: global branding, product innovation management across markets, adaptation and standardization of global marketing programs, global pricing, global supply chain management, global market segmentation, market assessment and entry decisions, export and import marketing issues, marketing topics relating to transitional and emerging economies, comparative marketing systems, global competitive strategy, channel relationship management in global marketing, inter- and intra-organizational marketing intelligence management in global marketing, information technology and global marketing, international alliances in marketing, and general cross-cultural marketing issues.

3. Corporate Affairs, Social Responsibility, and Sustainability

This track focuses on the broader domain of marketing and society—especially the issues of corporate affairs, social responsibility, and sustainability. Specific topics within each of these areas may include, but are not limited to: corporate affairs (media relations, government relations, shareholder relations, philanthropy, policy, and crisis management), social responsibility (CSR, stakeholder management, social alliances, marketing ethics, consumer welfare and protection, social marketing), and sustainability (sustainable marketing practices, environmental protection, green marketing, economic development, policy, consumer response). The track also welcomes topics related to marketing and public policy. In keeping with the conference theme, “Marketing 2010: Strategies and Solutions for a Tumultuous Economy,” papers that explore and offer solutions for marketing and society issues most critical in the contemporary environment are especially encouraged. Papers and special session proposals that are conceptual or empirical in nature using diverse methodological approaches are invited.

4. Brand Marketing and Communication

This track invites papers and special session proposals that provide insight into current and emerging issues in brand marketing and communications. Branding and brand communications are more important than ever with global competition, recessionary times and increasing erosion in customers’ attention. This track is open to papers and special sessions examining conventional branding problems, as well as those arising in online environments; in contexts other than Fast Moving Consumer Goods, such as service providers', retailers', and industrial brands; in developing economies; and in not-for-profit contexts. Also welcomed are papers and special sessions in related areas such as reputation management, promotions, and public relations.

5. Marketing Education

This track seeks papers and special session proposals that emphasize the connection between academic research and teaching. Topics may include 1) bringing academic research into the classroom (either specific examples or approaches), 2) pedagogical research (managing change and curriculum, technology in the classroom, active learning techniques, integrating the business community into the classroom, assessing teaching effectiveness, assessing student performance, student team/group management, graduate education, distance and/or online learning, and training doctoral students), or 3) other topics of interest to marketing educators (e.g., FERPA and student/faculty rights, classroom management strategies, etc).

6. Business-to-Business Marketing

This track invites papers and special session proposals focusing on a wide variety of theory, practice, and methods relevant to B2B marketing. We strongly encourage works related to newly emerging theory and topics as well as applications and extensions of existing theory and traditionally important topics. Topics that might spur interest may include but are not limited to business buyer behavior, B2B account management, B2B branding, unique challenges of integrated marketing for business markets, demand and supply integration, and globalization issues in B2B marketing that may include organizational, national and regional culture, contractual arrangement, pricing, and language issues. Theoretic/framework bases can certainly include traditional areas such as governance mechanisms, TCA, RBV, and buying center decision-making, but can go beyond traditional themes and extend toward social psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Rigorous qualitative, quantitative, and mixed method approaches are all of interest.

7. Research Methods

This track seeks papers and special session proposals that provide innovative methods, or enhancement of existing methods, in the areas of marketing research and data analysis. Papers should aim to advance the state of the art of marketing research methodology and/or demonstrate the contribution of marketing research to addressing substantive marketing issues. Topics may include, but are not limited to, methods of analyzing or presenting marketing data, imputation of missing data, measurement methods for marketing, marketing information systems and the use of information within organizations, primary or secondary data collection via the Internet, mathematical models of marketing phenomena, normative marketing decision models, and marketing research across cultural and national boundaries. Conceptual, empirical, analytical, simulation-based, and qualitative research approaches are welcome.

8. Marketing Strategy

This track welcomes papers and special session proposals that cover a broad range of marketing strategy topics. Potential topics include, but are not limited to: marketing strategy development and implementation, forces in the competitive environment, acquisitions and alliances, strategic/cultural orientation and marketing, product development and management, innovation issues, brand management, managing market knowledge, measuring marketing performance, marketing resources and capabilities, forces and trends affecting the present and future of marketing strategy, or any other topic that considers marketing variables that influence firm performance. Papers and special sessions that emphasize the conference theme are most welcome. Also, papers focusing on relevant practitioner concerns characterized by a dearth of academic research, emerging and evolving issues that might eventually have an impact on the marketing strategy domain, and new theories that might potentially help inform these issues are also welcome.

9. Sales and Customer Relationship Management

The challenges that face sales organizations are constantly changing. Subsequently, the sales organization has become more strategic, more important in market-sensing, and more responsible for cross-functional integration. These changes stem from the challenging economy, the evolution of the purchasing function, globalization, and greater focus on supply chain/value chain management. The end result is that members of the sales organization must adapt their strategies and tactics. This track welcomes papers on topics related to these changes. In particular, we welcome papers that consider the following topics: how the sales force creates and delivers value to customers, knowledge-based selling, sales force strategy, internationalization of the sales force, managing cross-functional selling teams, internal selling, knowledge transfer among salespeople, the impact of technology on performance, sales forecasting models/methods, and managing salespeople for high-performance.

10. Services, Service Science, and Retailing

This track invites papers and special session proposals that address a broad range of ongoing and emerging issues in the domains of services marketing, service science, and retailing. For services and service science, topics of interest include, but are not limited to the service experience, customer relationships, co-production, services branding, service alliances, e-services, service quality, service failure and recovery, service innovation, service productivity, service operations, service technology, and modeling service phenomena. For retailing, topics of interest include loyalty programs, multi-channel retailing, intangible retail assets, emerging technologies for multi-channel integration, and the role of retail environments.

11. Marketing and Technology

The Marketing and Technology track invites papers that explore topics at the intersection of marketing and technology. By this we intend a fairly broad set of subjects encompassing both the marketing of technology on the one hand, and marketing with technology on the other. Technology is broadly defined and is device-independent. This track welcomes provocative, insightful and timely work in topics such as: 1) the interplay of marketing strategy and technology, 2) the relationship between marketing and innovation, 3) electronic services, 4) interactive media and advertising including Web 2.0, 5) e-tailing and multichannel retailing, 6) online consumer behavior and consumer culture, 7) click stream or Web log data modeling, 8) sales force automation, 9) online survey methodology and 10) legal and ethical aspects of technology.

12. SIGnificant Advances among Special Interests

At the 2010 Winter Educators’ Conference, there are two premium time periods during the conference in which all session slots (usually 7 or 8 per time period) are reserved for SIGs to schedule activities that will serve the interests of their members. These slots are: 1) the second session of the first day and 2) the last session of the second day. The purpose of this is to guarantee that SIGs have blocks of prime time set aside to request programming for special topical sessions, guest speakers, panels, or other purposes. These slots are prime program spots because one falls just before the annual luncheon (first day) and the other falls at the end of the second day, which allows for that time period to be extended to accommodate receptions following the SIG session. In their proposals, SIGs should specify if they have a preference for the first day or second day time slot (these will be scheduled on a first-come, first-served basis). Proposals for these SIG sessions must emanate directly from the leadership of the individual SIGs (i.e., SIG Chair, Vice-Chair for Programs, etc.). Note that these slots are not for SIG Business Meetings – these will still need to be coordinated with Lynn Brown at AMA (lbrown@ama.org).