The Second Asia-Pacific Marketing Academy Conference Held Successfully at City University of Hong Kong

The Second Asia-Pacific Marketing Academy Conference Held Successfully at City University of Hong Kong

From May 10-12, 2024, the second Asia-Pacific Marketing Academy Conference (APMA) took place at City University of Hong Kong. Nearly 300 guests and representatives from around the world gathered in Hong Kong, China. Through keynote speeches, research reports, and specialized forums, attendees enthusiastically exchanged academic trends and discussed collaboration opportunities, showcasing the potential of the Asia-Pacific marketing academic community to work and innovate together.

                                                    The second Asia-Pacific Marketing Academy Conference

The APMA Conference was proposed by the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao University Alliance for Marketing (referred to as the Alliance for Marketing), which was formally established in 2023 by the School of Business at Sun Yat-sen University and marketing departments of universities in Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao. The first APMA conference was held at Sun Yat-sen University in 2023.

This year, the 2nd APMA Conference was held at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK). Professor Juan Li, Associate Vice President of CityUHK and Vice President (Academic) of CityUHK (Dongguan), served as the Chairman of the Conference. The theme of the conference was "Marketing in Transformation: Uniting Minds, Inspiring Change." To highlight the theme and provide diverse perspectives, APMA 2024 set up specialized forums in addition to keynote speeches and research report sessions. These forums included the Deans’ Forum, Meeting with World-Class Scholars Forum, Marketing Academic Job Market Forum, and Marketing & ESG Forum.

More than 200 research works were presented in English at the 36 parallel sessions of the conference. To promote a more coordinated and goal-oriented effort towards specific cutting-edge topics in marketing, APMA 2024 also set up several specialized paper sessions.

The APMA 2024 conference emphasized a vision of unity and forward-thinking, focusing on academic advancements, talent development, and industry-academy collaboration.

Deans’ Forum

As an important part of business schools, the future of marketing departments is closely tied to the future of business schools. A clear projection of marketing theory and practice in this era of transformation is impossible without a deep understanding of the development trends of business schools. APMA 2024 invited deans from business schools of top universities around the world, including City University of Hong Kong, New York University Shanghai, Tsinghua University, and University of Hong Kong. The deans shared their thoughts on the future of business schools under technological changes, inspiring the audience to navigate through the transformative era.

Marketing Academic Job Market Forum

To provide a platform for young scholars in the job market to showcase their research strengths, APMA 2024 set up the "Marketing Academic Job Market Forum." By inviting recruiters from leading institutions, the forum allowed job market candidates to present their research outputs, pipelines, and future plans to a broad and dedicated audience.

The Marketing Academic Job Market Forum of APMA 2024 attracted candidates from world-renowned universities such as the National University of Singapore, University of Warwick (UK), Aalto University (Finland), Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Xiamen University. More than 20 recruiting institutions attended the forum, including Nanjing University, Sun Yat-sen University, Sichuan University, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Beijing Normal University, South China University of Technology, Hunan University, Lanzhou University, City University of Hong Kong, City University of Hong Kong (Dongguan), Lingnan University, and University of Melbourne (Australia). The on-site exchanges at the forum have strengthened the talent pool of the Asia-Pacific marketing academic community.

Industry-Academy Exchange

To highlight the importance of sustainable marketing in future practices, APMA 2024 specially set up the Marketing & ESG Forum. The forum invited marketing executives to share the exploratory ESG practices of their respective enterprises.

APMA 2024 also cooperated with the Marketing Exchange Forum (MEF) of City University of Hong Kong. The theme of this year’s MEF Forum was "Gen Z, AI, and ESG: Building a Future-proof Path to Success." Through innovative exchanges between scholars and industry leaders, APMA hopes to promote dialogue and understanding between the academic community and industry, laying a foundation for fruitful research and practical collaboration.

International Cooperation

Nearly 300 participants of APMA 2024 came from all over the country and the world, with institutions represented from Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Finland, Malaysia, and Pakistan. In addition to the international diversity of participants, the submitted papers also demonstrated a wide range of international cooperation trends. More than 25% of the authors of the submitted papers were from overseas.

At the closing ceremony of the conference on May 12, 2024, Professor Haizhong Wang from the School of Business at Sun Yat-sen University delivered closing remarks as the Chairman of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao University Alliance for Marketing. He sincerely thanked all the colleagues from City University of Hong Kong as well as the conference volunteers. He emphasized "integrity, progressiveness, innovation, and openness" as the core values of APMA and looked forward to APMA’s role as a window and bridge for marketing academic exchanges.

Professor Juan Li, Chairman of APMA 2024, also expressed her gratitude to all the guests, participants, and members of the conference organizing committee at the closing ceremony. She then handed over the APMA flag to Professor Zhimin Zhou from the College of Management at Shenzhen University. Shenzhen University will host APMA 2025. We sincerely look forward to another gathering in Shenzhen next year and wish the Alliance for Marketing and the APMA conference a bright future!