David Mick and Rick Netemeyer
The McIntire School recently hosted the Eighth Biennial Conference on Transformative Consumer Research, one of the largest conferences in the School’s 100-year history. During the course of the two-day virtual conference, which took place June 28-29, more than 220 scholars and practitioners from across the world collaborated on a variety of research topics related to consumer welfare and quality of life.
“McIntire was honored to bring together dozens of experts in the field of TCR to examine and discuss a wide range of highly relevant societal issues, from improving consumer wisdom in a digital world, increasing mindfulness for better household financial management, and advancing consumer well-being in cashless cultures, to protecting consumers in a world of big data, the benefits and pitfalls of consumer self-tracking technologies, and addressing health as a social responsibility,” said McIntire Marketing Professor David Mick, who planned and organized the event with fellow McIntire Marketing Professor Rick Netemeyer. He added that several papers are anticipated from these conversations, which will be considered for a special issue of the Journal of Consumer Affairs that will be edited by the two event organizers.
TCR emerged in 2005, after Mick gave a presidential address at the Association for Consumer Research’s annual conference (co-organized by Netemeyer) calling for a stronger and more sustained focus on quality-of-life issues as they pertain to consumption worldwide; it is now a major movement within the association.
“Many exciting developments have occurred since the 2005 conference,” Netemeyer said, noting that one of the most important highlights has been the creation of the biennial conference. “In addition, a special issue on consumer welfare by the Journal of Consumer Research, the leading outlet of the field, was published in 2008; a 700-page monograph, Transformative Consumer Research for Personal and Collective Well Being, followed in 2012; a Journal of Consumer Research curation reviewed 10 years of TCR scholarship in 2015; and more than $300,000 has been raised and disseminated for TCR grants. Through these scholarly pursuits and exchange of fresh ideas, we hope to discover new ways to positively impact well-being for all.”
For more information about the 2021 TCR conference or the upcoming special issue of the Journal of Consumer Affairs, please visit the conference website or reach out to Mick or Netemeyer.
