AMI & ANZMAC
ANZMAC are proud to partner with the Australian Marketing Institute (AMI) for ongoing strategic engagement with the marketing industry and beyond. ANZMAC and AMI also proudly sponsor the Applied Research Grants scheme since 2023 and endeavour to continue identifying and addressing research questions that matters to the industry.
The 2026 Applied Research Grants scheme is now open!
Applications open: Monday 5 October 2026
Applications close: Monday 2 November 2026
Assessment and notification of outcomes: end of November 2026
Winners announced by AMI’s CEO: ANZMAC conference gala dinner, Wednesday 2 December 2026
2026-2027 Priority Themes
- Marketing in an agent-mediated market:Â AI assistants now sit between the customer and the brand, running the search, doing the comparison and in some categories completing the purchase. Practitioners need evidence on how brands get found and recommended inside generated answers, what happens to price promotion and loyalty when the buyer is software, and how to measure visibility that never produces a click.
- Trust, authenticity and brand safety in a synthetic media environment:Â Synthetic images, voices and personas are cheap enough now to be everywhere, including in fraud that borrows real brands. Work is needed on how audiences detect and respond to AI-generated content, what disclosure actually does to trust, and how a brand protects itself when the impersonation is convincing.
- Marketing claims under regulatory scrutiny:Â Environmental claims, discount and pricing representations, influencer disclosure and manipulative interface design have all moved from guidance to enforcement. Useful research would show what a substantiated claim looks like in practice, and whether careful compliance costs a brand anything in persuasion.
- Marketing under sustained affordability pressure:Â Cost-of-living strain has lasted long enough to change habits rather than just budgets. Questions worth answering include how households now trade down and trade off, what discount dependence does to a brand over the longer term, and whether value messaging can be done without eroding price integrity.
- Inclusive and accessible markets:Â Inclusive and accessible markets: Ageing consumers, people with disability, culturally and linguistically diverse communities and MÄori and First Nations customers remain poorly served by mainstream marketing. Proposals might address accessible design and communication, the commercial case for inclusion, or how organisations move past representation into service that works.
- Proving marketingâs contribution:Â Signal loss, retail media and AI search have broken the measurement chain many teams relied on. We welcome work connecting marketing activity to financial and social outcomes, separating short-term response from long-term brand effects, and building the evidence marketers need to hold their ground in the boardroom.
For further details and information on the scheme (eligibility, process, funding rules), please download this file and also refer to the AMI’s website (https://ami.org.au).
Winners of the AMI-ANZMAC research grants 2025-2026
- “Navigating the B2B Customer AI Journey: Insights for Firms Supporting AI Adoption” – La Trobe University
- “Legitimacy in AI-Augmented Marketing Creativity: How Senior Marketing Practitioners Evaluate Creative Work” – Murdoch University
- “The Ethical Challenges of the Marketing of Anti-Obesity Drugs (Ozempicâ˘, Wegovyâ˘, and Mounjaroâ˘)” – Queensland University of Technology
- “Navigating the Gamification Dilemma: Optimising Loyalty Program Design for Engagement and Choice” – University of Technology Sydney
Winners of the AMI-ANZMAC research grants 2024-2025
- âThe Real-World Impact of Brand Disinformationâ – Dr Aimee Riedel, Griffith University
- âFast track the transition to plant-based meat A neuroscience approach to delineate effective communication tacticsâ – Dr Patrick Duong, Curtin University
- âEnhancing the Predictive Utility of Positioning Maps: An Open-Sourced, Evidence Based Approach for Strategic Decision Making in Marketingâ – Prof Joshua Newton, Deakin University
- âPrice Promotion Model for Every Day Low Pricing (EDLP) Retailersâ – Dr David Lie, Monash University
- “Bridging the Academic-Practitioner Gap in Marketing: An Investigation of the Relevance and Drivers of Academic Marketing Knowledge Usage in Managerial Decision Makingâ – Dr Rico Piehler, Macquarie University
Winners of the AMI-ANZMAC research grants 2023-2024
- “The Impact of Generative AI on Advertising Agencies” – Professor Sean Sands and A/Professor Carla Ferraro, Swinburne University; Andrew Kohn and Renaud Frise, The General Store
- “Ethical and viable solutions following the deprecation of the third-party cookie in programmatic advertising” – Dr. Phoebe Fletcher and Dr. Alexandra Hess, Massey University
- “Consumer resilience and in the face of the cost-of-living crisis” – Dr. Nadia Zainuddin, University of Wollongong; Professor Ross Gordon, Queensland University of Technology; Dr Fiona Spotswood, University of Bristol; Carolyn Loton, Juntos Marketing; Tracey Bridges, Portchester Consulting
- “Media Customer Lifecycle: Drivers of Customer Loyalty and Retention” – Prof. Maggie Chuoyan Dong, Dr. Yu-Ting Lin and Mr. Sibo Zhang, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Mr. Jimmy Nguyen, Marketing Analytics Manager, Special Broadcasting Service Corporation