The 33rd EMAC Conference, May 18-21st 2004, Murcia

(Veronica Wong and Nick Lee, Aston Business School, Birmingham, UK)

Here are two survivors to report on the highlights of the main conference event.
First, a summary from Veronica

A conference to remember……………..

The 33rd EMAC Annual Conference (18-21 May 2004), hosted by the University of Murcia, in Spain, and held at the city’s Convention Centre, has been a spectacular success. There is no doubt that this is one of the best EMAC conferences that I have attended.

The event has broken a number of records in EMAC’s long conference history. Living firmly up to its theme, “Worldwide Marketing?”, this year’s conference boasts a record number of 860 paper submissions. An acceptance rate of 43% yielded a total of 371 presentations, including 336 papers and 35 posters, written by contributors from 35 countries. A record number of 630 participants attended the conference.

For the first time EMAC introduced a Track Chair and Co-Chair system for the scientific management of the review process, a major innovation which has been successfully implemented by this year’s conference organiser. The rigorous double-blind review process alone had involved the efforts of some 36 international scholars, acting as Chairs and Co-chairs and more than 400 reviewers from 30 countries.

Other features that deserve a mention include, not three, not four, but five, Special Sessions: Marketing Research and Management Practice (chaired by John Roberts); Innovation and Value Creation in Marketing (chaired by Donald Lehmann); Models and Measurement (Peter Leeflang); Consumer Behaviour (Rik Pieters) and International Marketing (Adamantios Diamantopoulos). Thanks to the efforts of Gilles Laurent and Jose Luis Munuera!. In addition, a good time was had by those who got to ‘Meet Journal Editors’ , Hubert Gatignon (IJRM), Dick Wittink (JMR) and Dawn Iacobucci (JCR). Last, but not least, the discussions held in the panel session, ‘Marketing Education in European Business Schools’, were instructive, while bringing together the views of deans from several Schools – Hubert Gatignon (INSEAD), Luis Renart (IESE), Chiara Mauri (Bocconi School of Management) and Robin Wensley (Warwick Business School).

While on the subject of innovations introduced in the 2004 EMAC Conference, we must acknowledge the thoughtful gesture of the award of six scholarships to papers from the new EU member countries (Cyprus, Estonia and Hungary) and one scholarship to a research group from a “far away University” (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil). These scholarships, in a way, live up to the 2004 Conference theme of worldwide marketing, meaning to act as a way to disseminate worldwide marketing inside the EU and other closed regions like Latin America.

As in previous years, an award is granted to recognise excellent work based on a doctoral thesis. This year, guided by the evaluations and comments of Track Chairs and Co-Chairs and reviewers, six papers were shortlisted and presented for evaluation by an experts’ Panel comprising José L. Munuera (Chair of EMAC 2004 Conference), Hubert Gatignon (Editor, IJRM), Gilles Laurent (VP Publications) and myself (VP Conferences). The ‘Best Paper of the Conference based on a Doctoral Thesis’ was awarded to Amina Ait El Houssi, Kaj Morel and Erik Jan Hultink (all from Delft University of Technology) for their paper “Analogical Learning of New Product Benefits: Between-Domain Analogies and Within-Domain Analogies”. In addition, Dr. Nils Andres, from the Brands Science Institute, the official sponsor of the award, presented a cheque of 1500 euros to the winners at the Gala dinner. Congratulations, once again, to the authors.

On behalf of EMAC and the International Journal of Research in Marketing, Gilles Laurent also announced the winners and the honorable mentions of the 2003 IJRM Best Paper Award at the Gala dinner. The winners of the Award for the best article published in IJRM were Prasad Ashutosh, Mahajan Vijay and Bronnenberg Bart for their article “Advertising versus pay-per-view in electronic media”, IJRM 20 (1), 13-30. The honorable mention went to: Shankar Venkatesh, Smith Amy K. and Rangaswamy Arvind for their article “Customer satisfaction and loyalty in online and offline environments”, IJRM 20 (2), 153-175. Many congratulations to these colleagues!

The winning article was selected on the basis of two rounds of voting by the members of the editorial board followed by an evaluation of the two papers receiving the most votes in the second round by the members of the selection committee, consisting of Naufel Vilcassim (Chair, London Business School, UK), Hans Baumgartner (The Pennsylvania State University, USA), Amitava Chattopadhyay (INSEAD, F), Pradeep Chintagunta (University of Chicago, USA).

The social side?

Over to Nick, who has this to say:

On the social side of things, the conference organisers and delegates – and the good people of Murcia itself it must be said – spared no effort in living up to the words of a famous drummer: “have a good time, all the time”. There were a number of unforgettable evenings and events, both formally organised by the conference and rather more informally ‘organised’ by various groups of delegates. In particular I don’t think I will ever forget the huge and impressive display of fireworks on the evening of the conference dinner, or at least I’ll never forget the sounds since I was cowering under the tables at the time. But I am assured the visuals more than lived up to the sounds.

The functions themselves were never less than fantastic, whether it be the amazing ceiling of the venue for Wednesday’s dinner, or the wonderful food of the Gala Dinner itself. Apparently the wine and beer were great as well, but of course I couldn’t possibly comment. The Gala Dinner was topped off with a raucous celebratory party afterwards, where the Spanish predilection for pouring huge measures of spirits was fully indulged by most. Although perhaps a warning may have been helpful to a number of us!

Murcia itself proved to be a sensational venue for a conference, particularly to the shoe shoppers amongst us. The sight of one delegate loaded down with six bags of shoes on return from a sneaky shopping trip will stay long in the memory. The city’s bars and clubs also proved more than accommodating, although a recalibration of one’s sense of timing was clearly necessary after being greeted with laughter from a doorman at 4.30am on Saturday morning: “You’re a bit early!” Of course, he was proved right, and when at 6.30am nobody appeared to be going home except us foreigners he had the last as well as the first laugh.

So overall, both academically and socially EMAC 2004 can be pronounced a resounding success, and we must congratulate the organising party for their fine and committed efforts. However, after looking high and low around the entire city, I never did find that beach…