Hi Everyone,

 Hope the new year is off to a good start! Here is our Q4’ 2024 wrap-up:

Our Q4 Accomplishments 

• 300+ Followers on Linkedin and Counting: Our AISIG community is thriving, and it’s all thanks to YOU! We’ve hit 100+ members on the AISIG website and 300+ followers on LinkedIn! 🚀 Let’s keep this momentum going—spread the word and help us grow even bigger! You can join via our website and follow us on LinkedIn & X.

• Our AI SIG membership has increased to 923! AI SIG is already one the largest AMA SIGs. Thank you everyone for joining and driving our successful community. Please keep on recommending our great community. 

• Currently, we are preparing to take the next step to be promoted from Popup SIG to a Full SIG. 

Conferences and Other Events in Q4

• Psychology of Technology Conference (October 12-13, 2024): Boston University’s Questrom School of Business recently hosted the 8th annual Psychology of Technology Institute conference This year’s theme, The Quantified Society, brought together many industry leaders, behavioral scientists, technologists, and AI experts. To learn more about the conference talks, visit their site: https://www.psychoftech.org/new-direction-2024-conference-talks. 

• 2024 Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Business Analytics (December 6-7): This annual AI/ML/BA conference was held at Yale this year. The conference included excellent parallel tracks on AI topics like AI: Bias, Fairness, Policy and Privacy, AI Recommender Systems and Reinforcement Learning, and sessions on Large Language models, and keynote speaker sessions. To learn more about the conference talks, here is the link to their agenda: 2024 AIML_schedule draft 11 12 2024.docx

• 2024 MarkTech Conference (December 13-14): The MarkTech conference was held at Columbia Business School and is in collaboration with the newly launched journal MarkTech: The Journal of Marketing and Technology. The conference program included a mix of academic research tracks and executive panel sessions with industry speakers. The executive panelists included industry leaders from Mondelez, SAP, Fandom, Marketecture Media, BodyHealth, and Kargo. To learn more details, here is the link to the conference program: MarkTech_2024_Conference_Program_Final.pdf

What’s New in Practice: 

• Rethink Retail has released its annual top retail experts list. From academia, the top retail experts include our SIG’s Co-Chair Professor Koen Pauwels, and SIG members Professors Venky Shankar and Mansur Khamitov among others. Here is a link to the full list: https://rethink.industries/top-retail-experts-2025/ 

• OpenAI just released its OPERATOR Agent, and Perplexity is its mobile one. Some see the agent as a fast response to DeepSeek R1? Make sure you check both out. It is another step into the future of agent AI. A good start may be these two for an “independent” assessment:
  OpenAI OPERATOR is HERE - Agents That Control Your Browser!
  https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/23/24350488/perplexity-ai-mobile-assistant-android
  https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/23/1110484/openai-launches-operator-an-agent-that-can-use-a-computer-for-you/ 

What’s New in Research:

• Hermann, E., & Puntoni, S. (2024). EXPRESS: Generative AI in Marketing and Principles for Ethical Design and Deployment. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 0(ja). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/07439156241309874

• Kian Siong Tey, Asaf Mazar, Geoff Tomaino, Angela L Duckworth, Lyle H Ungar, People judge others more harshly after talking to bots, PNAS Nexus, Volume 3, Issue 9, September 2024, pgae397, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae397

• Lambrecht, A., Baumgarth, C. (2025). Exploring the Influence of Dynamic and Self-Referencing Characteristics in Augmented Reality (AR) on Customer-Based Brand Equity: A Study on the Impact of AR Brand Experiences and the Moderating Role of Narcissism. In: Schmidt, H.J., Baumgarth, C., Redler, J. (eds) Forum Markenforschung 2023. Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-46109-6_2 

• Basu, R., Aktar, M. N., & Kumar, S. (2024). The interplay of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics in digital marketing and promotions: a review and research agenda. Journal of Marketing Analytics, 1-21.

Events and Conferences to watch out for:

• Upcoming Expert Corner: In Q1’2025 Expert Corner, we will feature Professor Tami Kim, Dartmouth College, to share her research expertise on digital censorship. Watch out for more details on social media. 

• Winter AMA 2025 - AISIG Special Session: Winter AMA will take place on February 14-16, 2025. We are organizing a special AISIG session for scholars and practitioners who share an interest in the intersection of AI and marketing research. The session will feature two talks and panel discussion focused on the marketing strategies prompted by rapid advancements in AI. Below are the time and venue of this special session.

  • When: Saturday, February 15, 2025, 3:30 PM

  • Where: Laveen A

• BizAI Conference 2025: BizAI 2025 will be held on March 28-30, 2025, at the University of Texas, Dallas. The conference will have the following distinguished panelists joining in to discuss the latest in AI applications:

  • Kaushal Kurapati, SVP Generative AI & Search, SalesForce– AI in Marketing

  • Vibhor Rastogi, Global Head of AI Investments, Citi Ventures– AI in Finance & Startups

  • Ragu Gurumurthy,  CTO, Deloitte – Enterprise AI

  • Craig Crisler, CEO, Support Ninja – AI in Customer Support & HR

• EMAC 2025 in Pozuelo (Madrid): This year’s European Marketing Conference is organized by ESIC University close to Madrid, Spain, from May 25-30, 2025. Like last year in Santorini, our AISIG plans to have dedicated AI sessions at the conference.
  More details at:
  https://www.emac2025conference.org/r/default.asp?iId=JJGKLD

• MDC Marketing Dynamics Conference 2025: MDC 2025 will be held on May 15-17, 2025, in Goa, India. The Goa Institute of Management is running the conference. Like last year in Santorini, our AISIG plans to have dedicated AI sessions at this leading international Marketing conference. More details at: https://mdc2025.gim.ac.in/

• Symposium on AI in Marketing at Wisconsin-Madison: The Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is thrilled to host the 2nd Symposium on Artificial Intelligence in Marketing, taking place on May 15-16, 2025, at WSB in Madison, Wisconsin. The symposium will be focused on modern AI applications in marketing (Deep Learning, Unstructured Data Analysis, Generative and Interactive AIs). The symposium will feature talks from the following research topics:

  • Generative AI in Marketing

  • Human-AI collaboration

  • Algorithmic Bias and Fairness

  • AI & Marketing Theory

  • Probabilistic Machine Learning and Computational Methods for Marketing

• The Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP) The Unconference:
  SCP Boutique Conference, The Unconference will be held on June 17–18, 2025, in Alexandria, VA. The theme of this conference is “the Intersection of Technology, Race, Prejudice, and the Responsible Enterprise”. Submission deadline is 31 January 2025. To learn more about the call for papers, and the conference, please visit https://myscp.org/events/boutique/alexandria2025.