Submissions | Call for Papers

About us

The Global Brand Conference of the Academy of Marketing’s Brand Identity and Corporate Reputation Special Interest Group has developed a reputation for being one of the world’s leading academic conferences on branding in the last fifteen years. At this event, top experts from around the world come together to debate and develop the state-of-play in branding theory and application.

The 16th Global Brand Conference (GBC) will be held in Bergamo (Italy) and hosted by Università degli Studi di Bergamo on 3rd-5th May, 2023.

Bergamo is located in northern Italy’s alpine Lombardy area, a few kilometers away from Milan and the alpine lakes of Como, Iseo, and Garda. The old part of the city, called Città Alta (Upper Town), is surrounded by a vast Venetian defense fortification wall recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 9 July 2017. The University of Bergamo was first established in Piazza Vecchia, the heart of the Upper Town, in 1968. Over the years, the University has become a widespread campus hosting over 20,000 students, a “cultural backbone” that extends between the city and its province.

The conference will be organized by:

Conference Chair | Prof. Daniela Andreini

Conference Co-chair | Prof. Giuseppe Pedeliento

Sig Chair | Dr Joana César Machado

Conference staff | Federico Mangiò, Gabriele Murtas, Ludovica Zocco, Riccardo Valesi

Conference Theme and Call for Papers

Today, this envisioned “digital playground” is no longer simply a prediction, but an actual reality: the metaverse is here.

A massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds where people can synchronously and persistently socialize, share, and co-create unique experiences (Ball, 2021), the metaverse has already grasped enormous interest and capitals all over the world, generating a multi-billion industry which is expected to reach $678.8 billion by 2030 (Bloomberg, 2022; Bloomberg Intelligence, 2021).

Encompassing and supported by technological components like Artificial Intelligence, the Blockchain, and immersive technologies like Augmented (AR) and Virtual (VR) reality – which have already proved to be able to massively affect and reconfigure brands and brand-related constructs (Pizzi et al. 2020; Puntoni et al. 2021; Mangiò et al. 2022) – the metaverse has the potential to revolutionise brands and brand management as we know them today. As a matter of fact, global leader brands like Nike, Dolce & Gabbana, Nvidia, Yunday or Coca Cola have already begun to experiment in the metaverse by, for example, issuing Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), setting up immersive Roblox-based showrooms, or creating digital twins realities to extend remote working. 

Yet, what the role of brands actually is in the metaverse, and what effects and implications that branding can exert in this novel context is still to be determined. Acknowledging this, the 16th Global Brand Conference will focus on the topic  

Branding in the Metaverse

with the overarching goal of exploring this terra incognita to go beyond its hype and outline its value, opportunities, and risks for brands and practitioners, and to contribute to the further development of the brand management discipline through rigorous research investigating the metaverse and/or topics and phenomena related to its components. 

Some of the questions that could tackle the conference theme include, but are not limited to the following:

• How and to what extent can traditional theoretical lenses and approaches usually adopted to investigate brand related phenomena (e.g. social identity theory, service dominant logic (SDL), actor-network theory (ANT), consumer culture theory (CCT), signaling theory, etc.) be adapted to make sense of branding in the immersive context of the metaverse?

• Which innovative methodological designs and analytical protocols are best suited to measure brand performances in the innovative context of the metaverse? Are traditional brand metrics still effective, or are new brand-related metrics needed to meet the unique features of the metaverse? 

• How does the metaverse influence or challenge the current debate in understanding online brand communities and brand co-creation?

• How does brand management practice evolve in the metaverse? How does it affect brand equity? 

• What are the innovative brand stimuli that organizations can deploy in the metaverse? What are the drivers of key brand-related outcomes, like consumer-brand engagement, brand experience, brand trust, brand commitment, positive and negative consumer-brand relationships in the metaverse?

• What are the types and formats of brand presence available in the metaverse? What are the advantages and disadvantages of different types and formats of brand presence in the metaverse in terms of consumers’ cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses? 

• How will omnichannel brand experiences change in face of the interoperability between the metaverse and the real world?

• How will novel digital assets like NFTs change the brand value chain? How will they affect consumer-brand relationships?

• What are the cross-cultural aspects of metaverse advertising and marketing?
• What are the ethical, privacy, and security issues faced when conducting branding and advertising activities in the metaverse?

Therefore, we invite original research and in-depth conceptual papers, addressing the above questions and challenges, as well as those focusing on a broad range of other topics within Brand, Identity, and Corporate Reputation, which include: 

• B2B Brands 
• Big Data Analytics and Brands
• Brand Activism 
• Brand Co-Creation
• Brand Equity 
• Brand Experience 
• Brand Image and Identity 
• Brand Love, Hate, and Brand Polarization 
• Brand Orientation 
• Corporate and Umbrella Brands 
• Ethical, Charity, and Green Brands 
• Heritage Brands 
• Internal Branding 
• Multisensory Branding 
• Online/Digital Brands
• Place and Event Branding 
• Product Branding
• Service Brands 
• Corporate Reputation and identity issues 

Registration is open since September 2022.

Submission Guidelines 

Authors wishing to present a competitive paper are invited to submit an extended abstract by 20th November, 2022 to mail.

In your email, please state the names and affiliations of all contributing authors. All papers will be double-blind reviewed, so authors should not be identified within the text. If the paper is accepted for the conference, the authors will have the opportunity to revise their paper based on reviewer feedback.

The extended abstract should be between 1,400–1,700 words (excluding references) and should follow the following structure: 

• Title, and Keywords (3–5) 
• Purpose 
• Methodology/Approach 
• Findings 
• Theoretical Implications 
• Practical Implications (if applicable) 
• Originality/Value 
• List of references 

If your submission is a working paper, please indicate this in the relevant section (e.g., Findings) and provide as much detail/discussion as possible for the other sections. Please respect the following formatting details: 

• File Naming: The files must contain the last name of the submitting author, the abstract’s title (up to first five words), and the date of submission. 

Example: Author_document_title_day_month_year 

• Margins: Normal
• Font Type & Size: Times New Roman, 12 pt
• Line-spacing: 1.5 
• File Format: MS Word (i.e. .doc, .docx) or PDF. 
• References: Please follow the APA system.

Special Issue: Journal of Interactive Marketing

After the conference, the authors of competitive papers could submit their accepted and revised papers to a Special Issue of the Journal of Interactive Marketing on the topic “Brands and Branding in the Metaverse” (opening: January 2023; closing: January 2024).

Important Dates and Information

References

Ball, M. (2022). The metaverse: and how it will revolutionize everything. Liveright Publishing Corporation. Retrievable at: www.matthewball.vc/all/forwardtothemetaverseprimer.

Bloomberg (2022, March 9). Metaverse Market Size Worth $678.8 Billion by 2030: Grand View Research, Inc. Retrievable at: https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2022-03-09/metaverse-market-size-worth-678-8-billion-by-2030-grand-view-research-inc

Bloomberg Intelligence (2021, December 1). Metaverse may be $800 billion market, next tech platform. Retrievable at: https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/blog/metaverse-may-be-800-billion-market-next-tech-platform/

Davenport, T., Guha, A., Grewal, D., & Bressgott, T. (2020). How artificial intelligence will change the future of marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 48(1), 24-42. doi:10.1007/s11747-019-00696-0

Kim, J. (2021) Advertising in the Metaverse: Research Agenda. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 21(3), 141-144, DOI: 10.1080/15252019.2021.2001273

Mangiò, F., Pedeliento, G., & Andreini, D. (2022). Brand Experience Co-Creation at the Time of Artificial Intelligence. In The Routledge Companion to Corporate Branding (pp. 195-210). Routledge.

Pizzi, G., Vannucci, V., & Aiello, G. (2020). Branding in the time of virtual reality: Are virtual store brand perceptions real?. Journal of Business Research, 119, 502-510.

Puntoni, S., Reczek, R. W., Giesler, M., & Botti, S. (2021). Consumers and artificial intelligence: An experiential perspective. Journal of Marketing, 85(1), 131-151.