Marketing Science 2017 Conference at USC in Los Angeles, CA
For three days, 935 marketing scientists gathered at USC in Los Angeles, CA for the great ISMS INFORMS event. Some of the highlights included: A long list of social media sessions, customer engagement in general, customer life-time value, ... . Even though we did not experience the typical California weather it was a great event. Congrats to the organizers for doing a perfect job!
The event kicked off with the opening reception at their downtown location. We had a great view of the 30th floor (see picture below).
Saturday, 10 June 2017
Next morning, sessions started. We first attended the Social Media and Negative Information Session. Below, you see a picture of the “Perils of Consumer Complaint Response in Social Media: A Natural Experiment with Facebook Conversation Policy” by Yuchi Zhang, Kunpeng Zhang, Xueming Luo.
Next, Steven Hoornaert took the stage with his talk The Interrelationship Between Brand Actions, Customer Engagement Behaviors And Brand Consumption’ (co-authors: Vijay Viswanathan, Edward C. Malthouse, Steven Hoornaert, Ewa Maslowska and Dirk Van den Poel).
Next, we attended the customer life-time value session.
It’s amazing to see the conference organizer - Dr. Gerard J. Tellis - still present his own paper...
Next, the award ceremony of the ISMS society took place, followed by a nice reception.
Then, it was dinner time, right underneath the space shuttle Endeavour. Below, you see a group picture of some of the most experienced marketing scientists and former organizers.
Next morning, we started by attending a customer engagement session in social media.
During the many breaks it was time for some networking. Below, you see a small part of the Belgian delegation.
Next morning, we again started with a session using Twitter data.
After the sessions, but also during the breaks there was plenty of time to have in-depth conversations on future collaborative research (see picture above and below).
Next morning, it was time for Matthias Bogaert’s talk (after the one by Robert Krider from Simon Fraser University). He presented a talk titled “Predicting Movie Watching Behavior Using Facebook Data And Information-fusion Sensitivity Analysis” (co-authors: Michel Ballings, Rob Bergmans, Dirk Van den Poel).
Next, I particularly liked the talk by Dr. Nikolaos Korfiatis: “Temporal Characteristics of Review Valence: Do Online Reviews Reflect True Product Quality?”
During the breaks, it was nice to do some informal networking. I particularly enjoyed my conversation with Dr. John D.C. Little (MIT). He still very actively engages at the Marketing Science Conference.
The final talk by a Ghent University PhD student was by Iris Roelens titled “How Customer Referral Programs Harnass the Power of Your Customers’ Friendships.” (co-authors: Philippe Baecke, Dries Benoit, Christophe Van den Bulte).
In sum, it was a great event. Kudos to the organizers as well as INFORMS!
Below, you find a group picture of the UGent delegation at the Marketing Science Conference with Downtown L.A. as a backdrop.
Next, we attended the TV Viewing Session, which started off with the talk by Dr. Miguel Godinho de Matos titled “The Impact Of Binge Watching On Tv Viewership And On The Subscription Of Tv Products
“ (co-author: Pedro M. Ferreira).
Next, Lena Hoeck took the stage title “The Interplay Of The First And Second Screen On Marketing Effectiveness” (co-author: Dr. Martin Spann).
The final talk of the session was titled “No Publicity is Bad Publicity: How Negative Buzz Increases Brand Awareness and Purchase Intention” by Jung Ah Han, Elea McDonnell Feit, Shuba Srinivasan.