ISMS Marketing Science Conference Held for the First Time in China

SHANGHAI, June 24, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Despite the challenges facing Chinese businesses as a result of the domestic economic slowdown, the country's internet industry continues on its course of rapid development, spawning the emergence of a new era in marketing. This will not only fuel the growth of the Chinese economy but also have a deep impact on the global marketing community. It is in this context that, for the first time, the ISMS Marketing Science Conference chose a venue in China. The 38^th edition of the event was hosted by the School of Management at Fudan University in Shanghai from June 16 to 18, 2016.

This year's event was the largest academic conference ever held across the global marketing science community, with the highest number of chief editors from international A-rated scholarly journals, including Journal of Consumer Research, Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research and Journal of Marketing. The conference brought together some 800 registered participants, including experts and scholars from over 330 universities and research institutes across 28 countries and regions worldwide. At the conference, participating members of the academic community discussed the results of as well as discoveries and issues arising from the most recent marketing studies, in addition to examining and identifying the future direction of and trends in the science of marketing in terms of research, discussion topics and prospects for the application of the results.

The three-day conference included 186 parallel forums and a number of lectures featuring distinguished academic researchers. The forums and lectures were categorized according to marketing segment, including advertising, retail, marketing strategies, consumer behavior, paid search marketing, social media marketing and digital marketing. Several guest scholars shared in-depth insights into price customization, consumer evaluation and consumer needs, among other aspects of marketing. 

With innovative ideas and well thought-out opinions concerning marketing from leading international management experts and marketing professionals, the event and its success is expected to promote the development of a global academic marketing community and lay a sound foundation for Chinese businesses to upgrade their marketing capabilities.

A new era for marketing is emerging in China  

As we approach the end of the fourth decade of the transformation of China into a market economy, Chinese businesses have started to put their marketing skills to work by engaging in a "product war" on the heels of the advertising, price and channel wars that they had previously engaged in, as the next move in advancing the country's "supply-side reforms" in the macroeconomic sense of the term. The concept that marketing creates value has been increasingly valued by the firms that are on their way to becoming world-class brands. At the same time, thanks to the rapid development of an internet industry, especially in the mobile space, Chinese businesses have developed enormous potential for innovation in marketing and are keeping pace with their peers in Western countries when it comes to launching and implementing innovative marketing strategies, including big data-based precision marketing and customer asset management, real-time bidding, customer participation in value creation, personalized marketing and collaborative consumption. All of this has made both the private and public sectors increasingly believe in the value of the science of marketing. 

Fudan University's marketing department has a long history

Fudan University, with the establishment of the Department of Business in 1917, became one of the earliest universities in China to launch modern business education programs. The University resumed the marketing science program and related research in the early 1980s, and developed Master's and PhD graduate programs in 1993 before formally setting up the marketing department in 1999. The School of Management at Fudan University, by learning from marketing departments at top international business schools, has established programs that focus on marketing strategies, consumer behavior and marketing models. In addition, the School of Management has built a presence in the international academic marketing community by conducting extensive academic exchanges and collaborations on marketing through a number of approaches, including hosting forums and workshops, inviting distinguished teachers as guest instructors, recruiting top-notch professors, engaging in international exchanges and joint development programs for students, and setting up collaborations and research platforms with other academic institutions. 

SOURCE School of Management, Fudan University