The Eleventh Biennial Conference on
Historical Analysis & Research in Marketing (CHARM) will mark the 20th
anniversary of the First North American Workshops on Historical Research in
Marketing held in 1983 at Michigan State University. This year’s conference will also be held in East Lansing,
Michigan at Michigan State University on May 15-18, 2003. The editors of the proceedings of that first
conference wrote in appreciation to the participants for their
"intelligence, energy, cooperativeness and good humor with which they set
out on a largely untrod path." Twenty years later the personal qualities
of CHARMers remains unchanged and the path has led us back to our roots as the
2003 Conference will again be held at Michigan State University, hosted by the
School of Packaging and the Eli Broad College of Business.
Papers on all phases of marketing history and
the history of marketing thought in all geographic areas and all timeframes are
welcome at this friendly, informal, and collegial gathering. Methodological and
pedagogical submissions are also invited. We are particularly interested in
seeing papers related to the conference theme-The heroes and scoundrels,
thinkers and innovators, great successes and spectacular failures, and
academics and practitioners who have made marketing one of history's most romantic
endeavors!
All paper submissions will be double blind
reviewed and a proceedings volume will be published. Full papers (25 page
maximum) or extended abstracts (750-1000 word plus references) may be
submitted. Authors may choose to publish either full papers or extended
abstracts in the proceedings. The deadline for paper submissions is November
15, 2002. Acceptances will be sent by the end of January, 2003. Outstanding
full papers may be invited for submission to the Journal of Macromarketing. The
full paper judged to be the best overall at the conference will be awarded the
Stanley C. Hollander Best Paper Award. The full paper submitted by a graduate
student judged to the best will be awarded the David D. Monieson Best Student
Paper Award.
For submission guidelines and additional
information about the conference please check the conference web page,
http://www.upei.ca/~charm
which will be updated periodically. Or, for more information contact the
Program Chair: Terrence H. Witkowski, Dept. of Marketing, California State
University, Long Beach, CA, 90840 (e-mail
witko@csulb.edu).
ARRANGEMENTS INFORMATION:
The 11th CHARM will be held at the Kellogg
Hotel and Conference Center located on South Harrison Road on the campus of
Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. It is conveniently located
just eight miles from the Capital City Airport. For those renting or arriving
by car, a 1,000 space attached parking garage is available on a complimentary
basis. The state-of-the-art conference center facilities include a recently
opened fitness center.The hotel has 165 guest rooms. The CHARM rate has been
set at $82 per night. When making reservations, refer to the CHARM conference.
For reservations, phone 800-875-5090 or 517-432-4000. For more information
about the Kellogg Conference Center, see their website at
http://www.hfs.msu.edu/kellogg/kellogg.html
Saturday's sessions will conclude in time for CHARMers to take in the highly
acclaimed East Lansing Art Fair, followed by dinner at the nearby Beggars'
Banquet. All meals from Thursday dinner through Sunday's lunch including the
Banquet as well as non-alcoholic refreshment breaks are included in the CHARM
registration fee. For more information
about arrangements, please contact Professor Diana Twede at MSU School of
Packaging. Phone 517-353-3869. Fax 517-353-8999. Email
twede@pilot.msu.edu
THE NEW SERVICE FOR MARKETING HISTORY
ATTENDEES
Those flying to the 11th CHARM
meeting in East Lansing in May 2003 can take advantage of a new free service
instituted at Kellogg Center. Those who
use Capital City Airport in Lansing will be met by free van service from
Kellogg Center and also return the same way provided they provide information
about flight numbers, airline and expected arrival times along with their
reservation forms. This results in a
considerable cost savings and provides a real convenience in lieu of the
sporadic taxi service normally available at the airport. Completion of the reservation forms in a
prompt matter will be very helpful since meal choice (lunch and dinner entrée
choices) will also need to be indicated on the forms to ensure that everything
is to your taste. The MSU Marketing and
Supply Chain Department intends to host the cocktail party for attendees on
Friday evening.
We have just seen the 2002 edition of Essays
in Economic & Business History, the annual publication of the Economic
and Business Historical Society. It
contains fourteen articles and one abstract selected from an undisclosed number
of papers presented at the society’s annual meeting. An unusually high proportion of the published papers is devoted
to marketing subjects. They include:
“The Role of Sales Agents in the Diffusion of U.S. Machine Tool Technology in
Europe” by Roberto Mazzoleni, Hofstra University; “The Rise and Fall of the
Green Doctrine: The Sherman Act, Howell Jackson, and the Interpretation of the
“Interstate Commerce Act”, 1890-1941,” by Harvey Gresham Husdpeth, Mississippi
Valley State University; “Edward Bok: The Editor As Entrepreneur,” by W. David
Lewis, Auburn University; and “The Nordstrom Way- Will It Survive?” (abstract
only) by Mark L. Gardener, Piedmont College.
Copies probably can be purchased from the secretary, Gene Smiley at
Marquette University, although distribution is generally concentrated among the
society’s members. Incidentally, the
forecast for Nordstrom’s is fairly optimistic.
JMM LEADS, ATLANTIC MONTHLY FOLLOWS
Journal
of Macromarketing readers know that we have published many retrospective
reviews of older seminal books in marketing in related areas in recent years as
part of our historical coverage. Now
the venerable Atlantic Monthly, that favorite adornment of faculty clubs
around the country, follows suit with a review of the late 19th
century The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.
The occasion of this review is the issuance of a new modern library
edition by Random House in New York with an introduction by Jane Jacobs, the
author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Sinclair hoped to depict the exploitation of
immigrant labor in Chicago at the end of the 19th century. However, the major impact of his book was to
create horror at the description of the filth, pollution, and general
corruption of the meat packing process there.
The Atlantic’s reviewer notes Sinclair’s rueful remark, “He aimed
an arrow for the heart of America, but instead struck it in its stomach.” The Jungle is credited with
indirectly inspiring the Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act of
1906.
The same July-August issue of the Atlantic
also contains an interesting travel article by Ian Fraser on the Mall of
America in the Minneapolis Metropolitan Market. As one might imagine Fraser finds the mall to be very banal and
in a sense ahistoric.
Journal of Macromarketing, June 2002 contains the following relevant
articles: “Enterprise Development Under
an Economic Detour: Black Owned Advertising Agencies in 1940-2000”, by Judy Foster Davis; “Out in the Market: History of the Gay
Market Segment in the United States” by Blaine J. Branchik; “Commercial Amphoras: The Earliest Consumer
Packages” by Diana Twede. Reviews
represented were, among others, Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned
Consumers’ Trust: From Wedgewood to Dell by Nancy L. Koehn reviewed by
Ronald Savitt; The Gift in 16th
Century France by Natalie Zeeman Davis reviewed by Diana Twede. Marketing historians will also be
interested in a paper by John Mittelstaedt “A Framework for Understanding the
Relationship Between Marketing and Religion” that appears in this issue but not
in the history section.
Hardly latest news, this is not hot flash
just off the news ticket. This is
something that Cheryl Hanson the super-intelligent student that is helping RIM
happened to discover that will be of considerable interest to marketing
historians. Fortunately, journal
publications last and will remain accessible through your library. The October 1996 issue of the American
Historical Review is devoted to the history of shopping centers and
contains the following articles: “From Town Center to Shopping Center: The
Reconfiguration of Community Marketplaces in Postwar America” by Lizabeth
Cohen; “U.S. Tax Policy and the
Shopping-Center Boom of the 1950s and 1960s”
by Thomas W. Hanchett; and “All the World’s a Mall: Reflections on the Social and Economic
Consequences of the American Shopping Center” by Kenneth T. Jackson.
************
RIDING HIGH ON THE HOG
Harley Davidson will celebrate its 100th
anniversary in 2003.
BUSTER BROWN STEPS INTO HISTORY
According to National Public Radio (“Morning
Edition”) May 6, 2002, marks the 100th anniversary of the appearance
of the Buster Brown comic strip prepared by Richard Outcault. This strip was, in a sense, a revival of his
original “Yellow Kid” comic, often believed to be the first American comic
strip. The Yellow Kid was a slum child
who was involved in rowdy behavior and was constantly in trouble. A cigarette-smoking, beer-swilling lad, he
aroused the resentment of parents even though his popularity led to the use of
the terms “yellow paper” and “yellow journalism” for the newspapers in which he
appeared. Eventually the strip was
abandoned. Subsequently, Outcault
introduced Buster Brown, a rich kid, who also got into trouble in a much more
genteel way, and who always apologized and atoned for his sins from the last
panel thus becoming much more acceptable to middle-class parents in a genteel
age. Given the popularity of Buster
Brown, in his distinctive upper-middle class style costume of short pants,
Eaton type jacket, and broad rimmed hat, Outcault went to the St. Louis World’s
Fair in 1904 and issued approximately 200 licenses for commercial utilization
of the Buster Brown image. The most
successful of these was the adoption of the image and the name by the Brown
Shoe Company also of St. Louis. Eventually,
the Brown Shoe Company employed a small army of boys and then midgets to
portray Buster Brown in store appearances and featured the character in its
radio show. This was one of the most
successful marketing programs in American history.
HISTORY SELLS
According to the AMA’s Marketing News August
5, 2002, many British branders are finding that exploitation of both their
firms and their nation’s historic images is providing helpful and increasing
sales to overseas markets. Somewhat
analogous opportunities are seen as available to U.S. marketers.
**************
RANGER ROGER’S CORNER
IS THE STATE OF THE MARKET THE MARKET-STATE?
Ranger Roger has sent us a copy of a London
Times literary supplement review of a new book by Philip Bobbitt, The
Shield of Achilles, Allen Lane, Penguin Press, written by T.G. Otte. In the postscript section of his book,
Bobbitt argues that the nation-state is being superseded by the
market-state. Essentially this involves
the way in which globalized enterprises are able to ooze out of national
jurisdictions and conduct their activities in ways that may be almost entirely
independent of the consequences of national economies. Bobbitt is not the only political historian
to share this view. Macromarketers may
well have a duty to pursue this concept further.
Stagecoach by Phillip L. Fradkin, New York: Simon and Schuster
2002, is a lively anecdotal history of the great logistical role that the Wells
Fargo Company played in the development of the American West. It was able to offer mail and package
delivery service in spite of the lackadaisical U.S. Postal Service supposed
congressional monopoly by purchasing U.S.P.S. stamped envelopes, adding its own
insignia, and selling the resultant product for several times the price of the
two combined stamps. Customers were
willing to pay the premium for fast, reliable delivery service. The current banking business grew out of the
carrier service.
Salaula: The World of Second Hand Clothing
and Zambia by Karen Tranberg Hansen,
August 2000, University of Chicago Press, 288 pgs, $52.50, describes the
process by which donated used clothing moves through thrift stores in the U.S.
and a succession of intermediaries to wind up at second-hand clothing stores in
Zambia, the former northern Rhodesia, in Africa. Robert Mittelstaedt in reviewing this book for the Journal of
Macromarketing points out that it describes an almost perfect example of how
this supply chain system constitutes an almost perfect example of the
Aldersonian macromarketing sorting process in matching a heterogeneous supply
to heterogeneous demand.
**************
RIM FALLS OUT OF THE POST BAG AND LANDS ON
THE INTERNET
For your convenience (have you ever heard
those words before?) RIM will try a revised distribution system. Instead of the semiannual mailing, we hope
to offer quarterly appearances on the association’s web page
<www.upei.ca/~charm>. Everyone on
the CHARM / AHRIM email list will be notified when each RIM issue is
posted. Please be sure that Brian Jones
<bjones@upei.ca> has your e-mail address and the addresses of any
interested friends/ colleagues who would want to read RIM. Incidentally, all back issues of RIM to and
including 1998 are available on the web site.
***********
NEW CHARM PROCEEDINGS CUMULATIVE INDEX
AVAILABLE
The CHARM web site now includes a new
cumulative index to all past CHARM proceedings (1983 through 2001). The index is organized chronologically by
conference and includes a full abstract of each paper published in the
proceedings as well as the author(s), title and page numbers of each
entry. With the use of your browser
search function (clicking on "Edit", then "Find in page")
this should make it easier for researchers to find papers dealing with subjects
of interest. Copies of full individual
papers can be ordered for the cost of photocopying and postage. Details are provided on the web page.
RENEE DIXON ABDICATES
Marketing and Supply Chain Management
Department secretary Renee Dixon has resigned so as to have more time to spend
with her husband Jim and their two boys.
Many RIM readers will remember Renee’s helpfulness at past CHARM
conferences in East Lansing. She will
be missed. This also means that her
e-mail address
dixonr@msu.edu
will no longer be operative. All
messages for Stan Hollander should be sent to
hollan10@msu.edu.
Please note that this is an alphanumeric address that consists of six
letters, followed by the numerals for one and zero. Comments about that referring to a big zero are most cordially
not invited.
Retrospectives in Marketing
Dept. of Marketing & Supply Chain
Management
N370 North Business Complex
Eli Broad Graduate School of Management
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1122 |
Frozen North Correspondent – D.G. Brian Jones,
University of Prince Edward Island |
Pacific Rim Correspondent – Terry Witkowski,
California State University at Long Beach |
Editor
Stanley Hollander, Michigan State University |
Texas Ranger Correspondent – Roger Dickinson,
University of Texas at Arlington |
Production Manager
Cheryl Hanson, Michigan State University |
Published quarterly by Michigan State
University |
