Last Friday I hosted consumer behavior researchers from local universities (generally, from University of Michigan to Queen’s University, and all points between) at our annual Consumer Behavior Symposium. It’s the 9^th year Ivey has hosted this group, and its continued vibrancy is a wonderful thing. In the heart of winter, it’s always gratifying to take a mental break and treat my brain to the cutting edge ideas of other researchers. It’s also fun to see the breadth of our field on display in the same room, at the same time. From predicting market behavior with neural activity with Carolyn Yoon, to studying the political and market forces influencing multiculturalism policy with Ela Veresiu, there was indeed something for everyone.

We had an “outside” guest this year, in “friend of Ivey” Nelson Amaral from American University in D.C. His work on luxury and counterfeiting was really interesting, and shed some light of how consumers think about the tricky concepts of “fake” and “real.”

We also were treated to three presentations that broadly dealt with consumer interactions, and their influence with, and on, other consumers. Sean Hingston taught us about inferred contagion, something I hadn’t really considered before. Matthew Philp talked to us about how consumers can “gift” an identity when choosing presents for others, which can actually change how people identify themselves. And Cindy Chan showed us data that demonstrated that consumers are more likely to rely on other consumers’ reviews for products (material purchases) than for experiences.

Finally, Ivey was well represented by the broad, policy-based presentation on saving and spending money by Rod Duclos, and the fascinating work of Peter Nguyen and Shane Wang on partitioned product categories and their influence on consumer judgment.

Towards the end of the day, we all made the quick walk over to the Psychology department, where we participated in a sort of keynote address by Sheldon Solomon, who was visiting Western from Skidmore College. Consumer researchers have adopted his Terror Management Theory, and so it was interesting to hear his broad talk on the genesis of these interesting ideas. Solomon’s style, which is part liberal arts lecture and part Dennis Miller style stand-up comedy (full hour, no notes, no slides) was a hilarious and informative way to end a day of thoughts, sharing, and researcher camaraderie.

And then most of us went to dinner, but I never report on those shenanigans…