Consumer behavior touches numerous aspects of people’s lives. Buying, where consumers exchange their money for goods, services and experiences, is one prominent way that consumer behavior enters into people’s lives. While useful in studying the economic aspect of the consumer, the notion of buying does not, at times, fully capture the rich and complex set of behaviors consumer researchers study — nor that consumer behavior touches. ACR 2025 sought to highlight this richness in consumer research. Thus, we welcomed all topics relevant to consumers: hence, the conference’s moniker, “Buying and Beyond.”

In addition to decisions related to buying, we invited submissions that explored other behaviors like when, where, and how people consume time, technology, food, or other resources. Similarly, we encouraged submissions that focused on specific domains where buying might not be at the forefront, such as political, healthcare, and social relationships. We hoped that this more expansive and inclusive focus offered the opportunity to add both theoretical and substantive insight for consumer policy and practice.

ACR 2025 took place in Washington D.C., a central hub for prominent international organizations, policy agencies, and industry and non-profit associations.

Conference Co-Chairs:

Selin A. Malkoc, The Ohio State University

Avni M. Shah, University of Toronto

Kathleen D. Vohs, University of Minnesota

 View the Conference Webpage

Bonjour, ACR explorers! Mark your calendars for Sept. 26-29: Paris ignites your research under the City of Lights! Brainstorm on cobblestones, debate by the Seine, share breakthroughs with the world. Connect, unwind, be inspired. Don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime adventure!

Submissions for the conference are now closed and reviews are in progress. Registration and hotel bookings will begin around July.

Opening/Pre-Conference Events, Wednesday-Thursday Sept 25-26. The conference will kick off with a series of pre-conference sessions: the ACR/Sheth Foundation Doctoral Symposium, the Early Career Workshop, and the Mid-Career Workshop.

Main Conference Events, Thursday-Saturday Sept 26-28. The conference will begin with an Opening Reception on Thursday, September 26, and the fellows address by Robert Kozinets. The next two days, September 27 and 28, will comprise of plenary sessions, research presentations including papers, films, and Roundtables & Workshops. Highlights of the conference will include addresses by our ACR President, Kristin Diehl. The conference will conclude with a Gala on Saturday evening on the Seine on river boats (Péniches) with great food, wine, music, beautiful views, and the opportunity to celebrate our strength together!

View the Conference Webpage

Our community reconvened for ACR 2023, October 26-28, 2023, in Seattle, the City of Goodwill. In a play on the city’s motto, the conference was dedicated to Spreading Good…Well.

Our theme of “Spreading Good…Well” can be interpreted in multiple ways, depending on the lens of the reader.

Sessions were packed with Good quality, rigorous research that was Well done: across a variety of paradigms and methodologies. Examples of these include our Methods workshops, special, competitive, and working papers, as well as roundtables and videography sessions that were inclusive of a wide range of research that is of interest to consumer researchers.

Many conference sessions were designed along the theme of helping our community Spread Goodwill and doing it Well! For example, our planned plenary sessions that focus on issues related to business ethics, corporate social responsibility, environmental marketing, consumer health (food consumption, addiction), financial decision making, responses to scarcity, special populations (subsistence marketplaces, the homeless and other vulnerable populations), and charitable giving. 

Conference Co-Chairs:
Lan Nguyen Chaplin, Priya Raghubir, and Keith Wilcox

The 53rd Annual Conference of the Association for Consumer Research (ACR) was held at Sheraton Downtown in Denver, Colorado from October 20-22, 2022. The theme of this conference was Together. It marked the reconvening of our community in a face-to-face setting after being virtual in both 2020 and 2021, allowing reconnections with friends and colleagues and the opportunity to meet new collaborators and friends. We wanted to celebrate this by facilitating all benefits that can come from a shared, in-person conference experience.

In addition to celebrating being physically together again, our conference theme advocated for coming together across subdisciplines to address important theoretical and substantive issues. Two such issues, the Post-Pandemic Sharing Economy and the Misinformation Infodemic, were highlighted in our plenary Perspectives and Prospects panels. Multiple methods were showcased in a series of Methods Workshops. For special sessions, competitive sessions, working papers, and roundtables, we particularly welcomed submissions that highlighted connections across theoretical perspectives and methodologies. And, when creating sessions of competitive papers and films, we created sessions around substantive topics rather than common methods, so that some sessions combined papers and films, and many sessions combined CCT work with experimental work.

Finally, we wanted to honor and facilitate connections among our diverse, international association of consumer researchers. We did this by offering a single track throughout the conference online, so that those who could not come to Denver could still participate.

Conference Co-Chairs: Haipeng (Allan) Chen, Giana Eckhardt, and Rebecca Hamilton

This conference will be virtual. It will be a renewal of our community with a few new twists to spark conversations in service of professional growth and to benefit from our diversity. There will be both synchronous and asynchronous sessions to provoke intellectual exchange as well as to connect and expand our community such as with:

– Pre-conference Forums

– Special Sessions, Thematic Roundtables & Working Paper Sessions

– Film Festival

– Globe Trotting

– Colleague Confabs

– Newcomer Celebration

We believe this is a time for our field to consider how we can more fully engage with compelling problems to develop useful theories. It is our hope that ACR 2021 will be an opportunity for scholars across methodological approaches, paradigms, and research interests to congregate and focus on research questions that address what the world needs now.

Accordingly, we encourage submissions that embody the spirit of consumer research as informing and contributing pragmatic and innovative solutions to important issues in the world. We hope to see cutting-edge, multi-method, and interdisciplinary submissions reflecting this conference theme. We provide some examples below:

Racism: A forum discussion including scholars from economics, psychology, and sociology to discuss how to promote anti-racism in research questions, research design, data collection, or representation of findings.
Branding: A special session exploring the role of brands in times of crisis from different theoretical lenses.
Climate Care: A special session or forum that explores opportunities for consumer research related to environmental issues and its influence on various areas such as marketplace experiences, rituals, or cognition and perception.
Collaboration: A workshop bringing together academics and practitioners from for-profit or non-profit organizations to share best practices for developing long lasting and productive partnerships.
Gender Identification: A special session or forum exploring the influences of gender identity on consumption.
Methodology: A tutorial with scholars who have successfully published multi-method articles encouraging participants to embrace methodological triangulation.
Privacy: A special session examining how consumers balance their own self-interests with the interests of others in contexts such as healthcare (e.g., contact tracing), civic engagement (e.g., getting out to vote), or personal technology (e.g., geolocation tracking).
Protests: A special session that examines protest traditions and intended outcomes, including those related to marketplace or social issues.
Self-care: A panel, special session, or forum that considers how individuals can more fully manage their personal and professional lives for productive outcomes.
Wisdom: A knowledge forum, special session, or panel discussion that integrates a broader set of issues—environment, capitalism, social justice—that provides an opportunity to generate new insights.

These are just suggestions that we hope will inspire ACR members to embrace an ethos of innovation and pragmatism for crafting novel submissions for our time together in the Fall.

We look forward to welcoming you!

Your ACR 2021 Conference Co-Chairs,

Tonya Williams Bradford, University of California, Irvine

Anat Keinan, Boston University

Matt Thomson, Western University

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At ACR 2013, our gala event was at the House of Blues in Chicago and the music was performed by a band consisting entirely of our ACR members (all faculty at Wharton School at the U of Pennsylvania). 

Click on the song titles below to view the videos!

[1] Mustang Sally (Audio-gram Video)

[2] Drum Intro + Pumped up Kicks

[3] What I Got

[4] Lonely Boy

[5] What’s my age again?

[6] Blister in the Sun

[7] All the Day and All the Night