CONFERENCE REPORT Encountering Markets: consumers, credit and devices

10-12 March 2011, Copenhagen Business School

Convenors: Liz McFall (Open University, UK); Paul du Gay (Copenhagen Business School); Christian Frankel (Copenhagen Business School); Franck Cochoy (University of Toulouse/CERTOP) and Joe Deville (Goldsmiths, London)

Delegates: Andrew Fearne (Kent Business School);  Torben Elgaard Jensen (Technical University of Denmark & Said Business School); Shaun French (Nottingham) Hans Kjellberg, Johan Hagberg (Stockholm); Bill Maurer (UC Irvine) Paul Langley (York); Martha Poon (NYU) Celia Lury; Liz Moor (Goldsmiths); Pascale Trompette (Grenoble); Elena Esposito (Emilia-Romagna) Alexandre Mallard (CSI, Paris); Donncha Marron (Robert Gordon, Aberdeen); Zsuzsanna Vargha (LSE) Sonja Narunsky-Laden (Johannesberg); Jose Ossandon, Stefan Schwarzkopf (CBS)

The conference was opened by Alan Irwin, CBS Dean of Research, in the impressive granite of the Kilen Building.  Andrew Fearne offered the first keynote with a discussion of the gap between perceptions and purchasing behaviour and the challenge of sustainable consumption based on Tesco’s Dunnhumby clubcard data. Despite his anxiety at being a supply chain management specialist surrounded by social scientists his lecture was received by an immediate show of hands from the majority of delegates when questions opened. This level of enthusiasm, energy and lively debate was to be a feature of the next two days with a diverse group eager to work out what shape empirical, interdisciplinary, international and inclusive studies of consumer markets might take. Bill Maurer’s discussion of encounters in the market of payments offered a provocative account of the virtues of US exceptionalism and the Federal Reserve in maintaining that the means of payment transfer stay outside of private ownership. This position might have opened him to the charge of ‘fedophilia’ but his account nevertheless persuaded Paul Langley of the importance of ‘style’ if not quite satisfying Langley’s standards of political analysis. The final keynote by Celia Lury and Liz Moor triggered an athletic debate with Martha Poon on the question of whether or no brand equity could be valued if it was not legally owned. Sustained by the culinary standards demanded by Copenhagen Business School, after a demanding schedule of papers over three days, the delegates still had enough in the tank for a serious discussion of the challenges posed by the establishment of an international, interdisciplinary virtual community of researchers interested in consumer markets. This may, or may not, turn out to be what CHARISMA means in the context of consumer markets!