International Social Marketing Conference 2025
Awards
There will be best paper and highly commended awards given out in four categories:
- Best and highly commended academic papers
- Best and highly commended practioner papers
- Best and highly commended student papers
- Best poster
All submissions will be blind peer reviewed and scored on the criteria of alignment with social marketing, behavioural outcome, contribution to social marketing, appropriate format and alignment with conference theme. The top scored papers in each category will be short-listed and reviewed by the conference chairs.
The best poster award will be a people’s choice with online voting via QR code. The criteria will be visual creativity and contribution to the theory or practice of social marketing.
Any conflict of interest will be declared and that person not involved in the decision-making for that category. The conference chairs are not eligible for any awards.
Special issues
We have two special issues associated with the conference and the editors of both journals will be at the conference for the Meet the Editors session.
Health Marketing Quarterly
“Health Marketing in the age of disruption”, guest-editors: Professor Raechel Johns, Dr Marjan Aslan and Dr Haruka Fujihira Deadline: 15 August 2025
Widespread disruption in health care has led to significant changes in health marketing. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly, but even before, rapid evolutions in technology, consumer needs, and consumer attitudes have adapted health marketing. This special issue of the Health Marketing Quarterly seeks to understand the future of health marketing, and how disruptions have impacted the sector.
There are three core disruptive trends that this special issue will focus on. The first is the escalation of digital technology; the second is geopolitical influences and the third is a rise in misinformation and distrust in science. We seek greater understanding on the impact of health marketing.
Researchers can explore a number of topics, such as:
- Digital Transformation, including rapid technological advancements and increasing use of digital platforms, immersive technologies and extended reality (XR), robotics, AI, agentic AI, digital twins and online representations. Databases revolutionizing telehealth, health professionals’ collaboration, long-term or short term care, palliative care, dementia care, and other support services in health may also be explored. The impacts of emerging technologies on consumer’s health choices and health decisions (e.g., undergoing medical screenings, selecting treatments, managing long-term health, or get vaccinated); as well as their concerns and responses to gathering personal information in return for more personalised care may be explored
- Geopolitical influences and changes, including political instability, a shift in globalisation, and consumers’ beliefs, needs and choices in health care.
- Misinformation and distrust in science, including antecedents and consequences of misinformation and distrust in science. Researchers may include the influences of AI-generated health-related content, Government decision making and personal autonomy for decision making, and other disruptions on consumers’ communication, learning, perceptions of health risks, and their health outcomes. Effective health marketing and persuasion and a greater understanding of community education may be considered here, too
All authors should consider the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and their link to health marketing should be included where relevant.
This special issue is promoted in conjunction with the International Social Marketing Conference hosted by the University of Canberra in May, 2025. Special consideration will be granted to topics discussed at the conference, and you can attend the conference online if you are unable to attend in person. However, new topics will also be considered for inclusion in the journal.
Journal of Social Impact in Business Research
“Driving Social Impact through Behavioural Business Research: What works and what doesn’t?” guest-editors: Professor Rebekah Russell-Bennett and Professor Joy Parkinson, deadline: 21 August 2025
Business research has been concerned with making social impact since inception in the 1800s with a focus on “maximizing common welfare” (Kaplan 2014 p530). Over the centuries business schools have evolved from a largely practical role outside of the public university system (cf. ESCP Europe in France 1819) to the Humbolt model of education through science (Germany) and the current approach of theoretical disciplines (Kaplan 2014). The theorisation of business research was a response to the criticisms by established disciplines in Europe and the USA that business schools lowered university academic standards (Kaplan 2014). Despite this theoretical focus, there was interest by business scholars in how business theories and frameworks could be developed that directly addressed the practical needs of organisations that sought to improve the welfare of individuals and societies. In particular there was interest in how behaviours of individuals could be influenced as part of solutions for societal benefit
In this special issue we seek to provide evidence of how business school behavioural disciplines can change behaviours throughout a system and bring about social impact (environmental, economic and/or human). This special issue seeks to identify what works and what doesn’t and translate this knowledge into practical guidelines and tools. We encourage articles on research that has been undertaken in partnership with businesses, communities and other organisations and approaches that integrate frameworks and/or theories across different business disciplines such as social marketing and behavioural economics or social marketing and Human resource management. Specifically, we prefer articles that adopt a broad approach and include multiple social impact areas rather than articles that focus on one specific context. Systematic literature reviews would be well-regarded however these articles need to go beyond descriptive analysis and pose new frameworks. All articles must include a web appendix (supplementary file for review) that includes practical tools such as checklists, templates, guidelines and/or canvase