Marketing Myopia Reloaded: Rediscovering Retail's Core

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Retail is being reinvented – algorithm by algorithm, app by app, store by store. Yet as we digitalise, automate, and optimise, a fundamental question remains: Are we still seeing the people behind the process? In an era of AI, robotics, and platform retailing, CERR 2026 invites researchers to re-centre the human being in the retail equation.

Our theme, 'Marketing Myopia Reloaded', builds on Theodore Levitt’s timeless question: What business are we really in? We invite contributions that challenge current tech-centrism, and instead explore how technologies – from AI to automation – can act as meaningful tools, not ends in themselves. We are not anti-tech. We are pro-human, pro-purpose, and pro-impact.

This year’s colloquium brings together academics and professionals to reflect on what we call “Re-Novation”: the human-centred renewal of retail. Retail is, and always will be, a people’s business – in the supply chain, at the point of sale, and along the entire customer journey. We ask: What is the core of retail today? Where do passion, emotion, and irrationality still matter?

Join us in Linz for a three-day exchange at the heart of Europe – in a city of contrasts and curiosity – as we collectively rediscover the human side of retail in a digital age.