ICORIA 2018: Looking back at the 17th ICORIA in Valencia
The advertising and communication research community had an unforgettable rendezvous 21-23 June in the city of Valencia (Spain), enjoying multi touchpoints at the 17th ICORIA.
188 participants from 27 countries participated in 38 sessions. The conference took place in the historic city centre of Valencia, where the conference chair Enrique Bigné and his organizing team gave the participants a taste of Mediterranean hospitality. Valencia combines rich tradition with the avant-garde, gourmet cuisine, superb beaches and weather and, above all, warm and friendly people, in a unique cocktail. Before the official start of the conference, 22 doctoral students gathered for the 5th ICORIA Doctoral Colloquium, organized by the Department of Marketing at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Valencia. The PhD students had the opportunity to learn from the insights and experience of 5 senior scholars in marketing and communication: prof. dr. Bettina T. Cornwell (University of Oregon, USA), prof. dr. Laura Herrewijn (Ghent University, Belgium), Liselot Hudders (Ghent University, Belgium – host of the colloquium), prof. dr. Tim Smits (Katholic University Leuven, Belgium), Dieneke Van de Sompel (Ghent University, Belgium – host of the colloquium) and prof. dr. Guda van Noort (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands). The colloquium provided PhD students with the chance to meet peers from different countries and cover strategies for research collaborations, as well as insider tips and career advice, methodological issues (dealing with p-values) and strategies to handle academic reviews.
The conference started off with a welcome reception in an unbeatable setting, the Botanical Garden of the University of Valencia. During its five centuries of history, this live museum has compiled a collection of 4,500 plant species from the five continents. The event took place in a relaxed and sunny atmosphere and was enlivened by beautiful music played by a young Spanish guitarist.
During the two days of parallel sessions, the conference participants had the opportunity to discuss very interesting and diverse advertising issues, among many others, e-WOM, chatbots, influencers, native advertising, CSR Communication, SNS or Multichannel and touchpoints. The conference included a special session on the impact of virtual reality, the traditional Assembly, EAA and IJA meetings and an outstanding ‘meet the editors’ session. Thank you to Shintaro Okazaki from Journal of Advertising; Wendy W. Moe from Journal of Interactive Marketing, Scott Kowslow from Journal of Advertising Research, and Martin Eisend from International Journal of Advertising for their valuable contribution.
The organizing team would like to highlight the presence of two keynote speakers. Wendy W. Moe, Professor of Marketing and Director of the MS in Marketing Analytics at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, provided an overview of the role of advertising and social media word-of-mouth in the customer journey. Jordi Guix, an insights & marketing professional and consultant, with more than 20 years of experience dealing with brands, consumers and advertising, gave a snapshot on advertising law in the AI age.
At the gala dinner the winners of the best paper awards were unveiled. The award for the best conference paper went to Seounmi Youn and Wonsun Shin for their paper entitled “The effect of Facebook newsfeed ads on teens’ information disclosure: the interplay of persuasion knowledge, benefit-risk assessment and ad skepticism”. The award for the best student paper was handed out to Steffi De Jans, Liselot Hudders and Veroline Cauberghe for their paper “How an advertising disclosure alerts teenagers to sponsored vlogs: the moderating role of influencer transparency”. Congratulations to all the nominees and to the winners!
Putting into practice the conference theme “brand communication with multi touchpoints”, the interactions among participants were not limited to the academic arena. Several social events were organized that fostered the generation and strengthening of relationships in relaxed environments, such as the welcome reception at the Botanical Garden of the University of Valencia, the gala dinner at the Port of Valencia and the wine and typical Spanish cuisine tasting at the Valencia Denominacion de Origen institute.
The conference chair and his team from the University of Valencia would like to thank the authors who presented their papers at the conference, stimulating debate and knowledge generation. They also wish to express their gratitude to all the reviewers for their decisive role in ensuring the academic quality of the conference, to the jury members, to the session chairs, the EAA Executive Board and the sponsors for their important support. We hope that ICORIA 2018 had been able to open interesting paths for future research and to create or strengthen personal and scholarly bonds and, of course, to generate good, long lasting memories of the Mediterranean city of light and friendliness.
