Decision Science News

SOCIETY FOR CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY CRUISE-CONFERENCE

The Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP) will be holding its Annual Winter Conference on February 9-13, 2006. The SCP conference provides a relatively intimate forum, with opportunities for a high level of interaction among participants interested in the integration of psychology and consumer research. This year the conference will take place at sea, on a Carnival Cruise! Not only will you hear brilliant colleagues present intriguing research aboard the Imagination cruise ship, but you will also have the opportunity to spend time at the ports of Key West, Florida and Cozumel, Mexico.

Carnival Cruise from Port of Miami February 9-13, 2006

We will set sail from the port of Miami at 4:00 PM on February 9th and return to the port of Miami at 8:00 AM on February 13th. Since the conference will be at sea much of the time, it will be very difficult and costly to arrive late or leave early. Therefore, those who wish to participate in this conference will need to plan on attending the entire event. We have reserved a set of rooms at discounted conference rates, and the prices will be comparable to the cost of registration, hotel + meals at prior SCP conferences, with options ranging from around $720 per person, double occupancy (you will share the cabin with another conference attendee) to around $1140 per person single occupancy. These prices are for ocean view cabins and include conference registration, port charges, taxes, insurance (travel), meals, lodging, and gratuity. Students will receive a $50 discount, and non-SCP members will pay an additional $50. Participants also have the option of upgrading to a suite, which are limited in supply and not part of SCP’s contract with Carnival. For more details on the cruise, the cabins, shore excursions, etc. see:

http://www.carnival.com/Ship_Detail.aspx?shipCode=IM

(click on the ‘Western Caribbean, 4-day’ option to learn more about the ship’s itinerary)

For questions on cruise logistics and/or travel arrangements, please contact our travel agent, Sonatina Fernandes (Tel: 319-351-1911; sonatina1000 at yahoo.com)

Conference Submissions:

We will be accepting proposals for competitive papers, special sessions, and working paper sessions. Working paper sessions will involve presentations at a table in an “AMA job interview style” format. We welcome diverse methodologies including experimental research, ethnography, survey research, or other methodologies relevant to the study of consumer psychology.

All submissions should be sent electronically as a pdf document to http://sloanspace.mit.edu.

All SCP members will have an account on SloanSpace soon (you will get an email with the information). If you don?t get an account and need one, please contact Leonard Lee at: leonardl at mit.edu.

Competitive papers and working paper session submissions should be no longer than 12 pages, double-spaced, in a 12 point font (including bibliography and tables). This limit is to encourage authors to describe their research to the reviewers in a succinct manner. Proposals should be submitted on SloanSpace in pdf format. In the case of papers, authors must agree, if the submission is accepted, to publish either the complete paper or an abstract in the Conference Proceedings. At least one author of each submitted competitive paper/working paper session must agree to register and present the paper at the conference, if it is accepted. Submissions must be received by Friday, September 2nd, 2005.

Special topic session proposal submissions should include (a) the rationale for the session, (b) a list of participants, and (c) a one page abstract for each paper. Submissions should be double-spaced in 12 point font. As the goal of the conference is to stimulate intellectual discussions, there should only be three papers and one discussant per session. The discussant of each session should be prepared to not only discuss the papers presented, but more importantly to engage the audience in conversation about the research ideas and how to forward the research in this stream. The chair of the session should be prepared to make sure that all talks proceed (and end) on schedule. Special topic session presenters are required to publish at least an abstract of their presentations (or entire papers if they prefer) in a Proceedings volume. As with the competitive papers and working paper sessions, special topic session proposals should be submitted on SloanSpace as attachments in pdf format. At least one author of each presentation in the proposal must agree to register and present at the conference, if their proposal is accepted. Submissions must be received by Friday, September 2nd, 2005.

We look forward to seeing you at the SCP cruise-conference next
February!

Dan Ariely (Ariely at mit.edu)
Baba Shiv (shiv_baba at gsb.stanford.edu)
Michal Ann Strahilevitz (SCPcruise at yahoo.com)