Rudy Nayga, Andreas Drichoutis, Maurizio Canavari, and I are set to hold what is now the 4th summer school on "Experimental Auctions: Theory and Applications in Food Marketing and Consumer Preferences Analysis."
The last three years, the course has been in Italy (check out some of the photos here or here). This year, with the help of Wu Xiao, we are moving the course to Xinjiang Agricultural University in China.
If you have interest in attending, applications are now being accepted.
Experimental auctions are a technique to measure consumer willingness-to-pay for new food products, which in turn is used to project demand, market share, and benefits/costs of public policies. The approach requires people to "put their money where their mouth is", and it represents an attempt to generate data about consumer preferences that is more accurate than what is often obtained from surveys. The content is mainly targeted toward graduate students or early career professionals (or marketing researchers interested in learning about a new technique).