
NIM fosters active dialog and cooperation with experts from science and practice, innovators, think tanks and start-ups both in Germany and throughout the world. They include the following:
BERLIN-INSTITUT FÜR BEVÖLKERUNG UND ENTWICKLUNG
The Berlin Institute for Population and Development and NIM have been conducting joint research for many years on various studies such as “Europe’s Demographic Future. Where the Regions Are Heading after a Decade of Crises".
BAYES BUSINESS SCHOOL - CITY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
For the study “Adoption Rates for Contact Tracing App Configurations in Germany", NIM collaborated with researchers from the Bayes Business School in London who investigated this topic also in UK (Wiertz et al., 2020).
CENTRAL UNIVERSITY OF FINANCE AND ECONOMICS
Since 2014, NIM has been cooperating with the Business School of the Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE) in Beijing. Together with CUFE, NIM runs an experimental laboratory, where they are jointly investigating “Social norms and regulatory focus in marketing for real new products – An international comparison.” As part of the cooperation, NIM also offers a two-week summer school program at CUFE on “Strategic Foresight and Decision-Making in International Markets". This allows NIM researchers to gain first-hand insight into China’s dynamic development and also talk with the students about methods and results.
FRIEDRICH-ALEXANDER-UNIVERSITÄT ERLANGEN-NÜRNBERG
NIM (formerly the GfK Verein) established the GfK Chair of Marketing Intelligence at FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg in January 2007.
Anthropomorphic Conversational Agents for Rational and Emotional DecisionsINSTITUTE FOR THE FUTURE
The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is a non-profit think tank based in Palo Alto, California and the world’s leading organization for future-oriented thinking. IFTF and NIM have been cooperating as research partners since the end of 2019 and carry out joint research on “Future Ready Organizations.” The results appear in the article “Measuring the impact of strategic foresight – results from a survey of organizational foresight capacity” (F. Buder, 2020), published in “Towards Future Readiness – A Playbook for Building Foresight Capacity".
JUSTUS LIEBIG UNIVERSITY GIESSEN
Together with the department of Prof. Dr. Jella Pfeiffer at Justus Liebig University Giessen, NIM is investigating several topics regarding the "voice-based customer journey".
What the voice reveals: emotions and sharing of experiences
Testing methods for real-time emotion measurement
Anthropomorphic Conversational Agents for Rational and Emotional Decisions
KIT
In partnership with KIT, CITEC (Bielefeld) and the University of Southern Denmark, NIM investigated the use of virtual reality (VR) technology in virtual supermarkets (Meißner, M., Pfeiffer, J., Peukert, C., Dietrich, H., & Pfeiffer, T., 2020). In another study conducted at the KD2 lab, NIM investigated the effects that emotional arousal has on the voice and the need to communicate.
MAPP CENTRE, AARHUS UNIVERSITY
The MAPP Centre is an interdisciplinary research centre at the Department of Management at Aarhus University with over 30 years of experience in generating consumer behaviour insights in the area of food systems, leading the field with actionable implications for industry and public policy in Denmark. Most research at the MAPP Centre is done in cooperation with companies, trade associations, and researchers – both nationally and internationally – in adjacent areas as well as in non-adjacent areas, mainly within food, technology and agricultural production.
ST. GALLEN SYMPOSIUM
The St. Gallen Symposium is the world’s leading initiative for intergenerational debates on economic, political and social developments. NIM and the St. Gallen Symposium have been cooperating since 2014 on the study “Voices of the Leaders of Tomorrow". Each year, top talents from many countries are surveyed on economic and social issues. The focus of this year’s study was “Human Freedom and Choice in the Light of Technological Change.“
NUREMBERG INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
In collaboration with Prof. Dr. Florian Riedmüller from Nuremberg Tech, we started a research project investigating how the design of product labels affects consumer’s preferences and consumption behavior.
UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA
Workshops and doctoral seminars on experimental economic research, decision theory and behavioral science were established in 2012 and are part of the cooperation with the University of Pretoria. In addition to training and education, the cooperation also includes joint research, such as the project "Social preferences in Human-Computer-Interactions"
UNIVERSITY OF SIENA
In a joint research project, NIM’s market decision labs and Prof. Alessandro Innocenti at the University of Siena investigate how computer agents with human characteristics drive anthropomorphism and change behavior in human-computer interactions. The research project focuses on voice as communication medium as well as computer agents with virtual avatars. Alessandro Innocenti is head of the Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences and coordinates the Laboratory of Experimental Economics LabSi as well as the Laboratory of Virtual Reality of the University of Siena (LabVR UNISI). Prof. Innocenti is partner in the project "Social Preferences in Human-Computer-Interactions".
ZOLLHOF - TECH INCUBATOR
ZOLLHOF - Tech Incubator is the digital center for high-tech start-ups and corporate innovators in Middle Franconia. Founded by renowned companies and public partners, ZOLLHOF provides support to more than 50 start-ups and 10 companies in areas related to innovation and entrepreneurship. Inspired by ZOLLHOF’s mission, a cooperation was started with the aim of researching and working on the challenges of digital transformation through knowledge exchange and joint events (e.g., workshops).