Introduction

The International Commerce Institute is dedicated to the funding of research of the highest quality and the broadest significance aimed at furthering academic and business thought leaders’ knowledge in the Consumer Goods business. The Institute disseminates this thought leadership through its publication the International Commerce Review: ECR Journal, its website and through other electronic repositories and libraries throughout the world as well as through executive development programmes in partnership with reputed academic institutions.

Leading organisations in the Consumer Goods business worldwide are invited to support the mission of the Institute through the funding of research projects in a field of their choice.

As a leading manufacturing organisation committed to manage its social and environmental impacts responsibly, Unilever makes funds available to further academic and industry knowledge in the area of: 

• Shifting Consumer Behaviour: How consumers have changed their behaviour during the current crisis (price points, products, brands, assortments, categories, stores, etc.) 

 Invitation to apply for Research Funds

If you are interested in conducting innovative research that generates insights of interest to thought leaders in academia, retailing and the Consumer Goods business,

Write a research paper that:
- is consistent with International Commerce Institute length and style requirements
- complies with ethical guidelines for academic publishing,
- has not been published elsewhere in violation of our copyright guidelines,
- includes a full cover page with names of all authors.

Your final paper should be concise and describe the managerial relevance of your research in a language understandable to a practitioner. Depending on the nature of the work, this may stress the importance of the problem, the significance of the tools to management issues or insights that could deepen a manager's perspective on specific decision-making scenarios. Most research papers are not appropriate for practitioners, but the problems, methods and insights they contain should be of interest to practicing managers.

Please note that, due to its not-for-profit status, it is the International Commerce Institute's policy that no overhead costs will be paid to academic institutes. If necessary, such costs must be included in the requested daily rate for the researcher.

Application submission

All submissions must be made online at http://www.ecr-institute.org/workspaces/research-grants

Kindly do not submit more than one application per calendar year.

Log in: If you have not registered, you will be prompted to generate a new account that includes your personalised user ID. Please fill in the entire form; the email address is used for all correspondence related to your submission.

Submit your application on line: Once logged in, the site allows you to submit an application on line. The system accepts most word-processing formats, although MS Word or PDF are preferred. You will be asked to answer a few questions; in addition you will be able to submit a separate file as a supporting document. State the names of co-investigators who do not have any conflict of interest with you or your co-authors. All submissions to International Commerce Institute are expected to comply with International Commerce Institute ethics and copyright guidelines.

Get a manuscript tracking number at the end of the submission. Please include this number in all subsequent correspondence regarding your submission.

Selection Process

Review is made by the Institute’s Research Grant Application Committee, consisting of academics as well as management of both Unilever and the Institute whom will allocate funds as deemed appropriate. This step should take about four weeks. Only applications consistent with innovative research will be considered. If the application is not judged to have the potential to make a significant contribution to academic and industry knowledge, it will be rejected.

A selection process of the applications will take place based on the following criteria:

1. Uniqueness, innovativeness of the topic
2. Level of contribution to better understanding shopper and shopping value (usefulness)
3. Level of contribution to ECR Principles as outlined above
4. Feasibility of implementing the findings
5. Positioning in relation to existing academic work on this topic

The Application Committee will decide whether the application should be accepted as is, revised or rejected.

Decision

E-mail notification will be sent to the corresponding author four weeks after the cut off date informing the person if his/her application has been retained for further evaluation or not, along with the evaluation of the Application Committee. Authors on the short list will be contacted if additional information is required.

Final decision will be taken by the Board of the International Commerce Institute on recommendation of the Application Committee. Authors of applications that have been retained will be notified by e-mail with information on deliverables.

Deliverables

A first deliverable will need to be submitted no later than at half-term of the project (max 5.000 words). This document should indicate the literature review, the objectives, the research model, the hypotheses, the research methodology that you propose to use to test the research hypotheses, etc. In other words, all the information required before a researcher proceeds with the empirical phase of the research.

The second deliverable is a research paper targeted at a scholarly journal. It should incorporate the analysis of the results, discussion of the results, comparison of the results and the hypotheses, testing sections with relevant theory and current business practice, conclusions, business implications, limitations and possible future research directions. This extensive report should start with an executive summary and all analytical results, questionnaires, etc. should be included as appendices.

The third (i.e. final) deliverable is a non-technical paper written in a journalistic style palatable to non-academics. This paper may be published in the International Commerce Review: ECR Journal.

Payment of the grant

The grant  will be paid out in two installments, the first after delivery of the first deliverable and its acceptance by the Review Committee and the second at the end of the project when the second and third deliverables have been submitted with all the supporting documents, once again subject to final acceptance by the Review Committee.

You will be requested to send a detailed cost overview signed by your accountant and indicate the exact bank details including the bank account’s IBAN number, SWIFT code and bank address and also specify the VAT number of the recipient if applicable and send all this information to the secretariat at secretariat@ecr-institute.org

Publication

Participants will be requested to submit the final version of their research in a Word file. Participants agree that findings of this research may be published internationally, in whole or in part, by the International Commerce Institute of ECR Europe clearly identifying its author.

Authors may post their final papers on their personal website after publication by the International Commerce Institute, as long as the site is not copyrighted or does not serve as a formal repository.

More Information: If you have any questions, are unable to access the online submission, or are having trouble getting information on the status of your paper, please contact the International Commerce Institutes' secretariat at secretariat@ecr-institute.org.