I made a choice to get off the public health - social marketing - health communication carousel of conferences and seek out some new perspectives at least once a year. This weekend I am with over 110 consumer researchers at the Second Transformative Consumer Research Conference at Villanova University (flashbacks to dorm life and all!) discussing "The World We All Want" as part of the Halloran Philantrophies' eponymous project.
Transformative Consumer Research is a movement within the Association of Consumer Research that seeks to encourage, support, and publicize research that benefits consumer welfare and quality of life for all beings affected by consumption across the world. Actually sounds like a branch of social marketing except for the disquieting feature that there is almost no communication amongst us. SO thanks to Marv Goldberg, here I am along with a few other people I know from the social marketing community: Alan Andreasen, Sonja Greer and Debra Scammon.
The conference is intended to bring together consumer researchers to discuss how our scholarship and actions can help alleviate the most pressing social and economic problems. Participants are divided into small groups for the weekend to discuss: poverty, sustainable consumption, developing markets, materialism, general health, food and health, at risk groups, social justice and immigration, culture and ethnicity.
Tonight was the reception and mingle opening. Among some of the conversations I had:
- Research on the use of emotional intelligence for weight loss among teens and college students.
- The use of color to improve conceptual understanding (think 'green' = environment).
- The use of narratives to gain insight into patient decision-making about breast cancer treatment.
- How another study initially designed to explore the same methodology with women contemplating hormone replacement therapy was redesigned when 70% of the women they began talking to about HRT became focused on their 'hidden' anti-depressant use - complete with the same language to describe their use that people with other addictions employ. Now it's about anti-depressant use - an interesting area I have not seen much about in the literature I read.
- The use of archetypes for designing and measuring commercial (and public health) branding programs - and why there should be more attention focused on this (if the London UK brand agencies have anything to say about it).
And I also had the pleasure of spending some time with Marc Mathieu, formerly the Senior Vice President of Global Brand Marketing at Coca-Cola and now CEO of MyBeDo. We'll be hearing more from him tomorrow night.
So consumer researchers are interested in learning how they can help transform society? Busy weekend. Should be some fascinating conversations.
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