Retrospectives in Marketing
Volume 20,
Number 1,
August 2007
Published by the
CHARM (Conference on Historical Analysis & Research in Marketing)
Association Quinnipiac University, Hamden, CT, USA
*** NEWS ***
Journal of Historical Research in Marketing
Becomes a Reality!
Emerald Publishing
has accepted a proposal to begin publishing a new journal to be
titled Journal of Historical
Research in Marketing. The founding editorial staff will
include Brian Jones (Quinnipiac University), Eric Shaw (Florida
Atlantic University), Peggy Cunningham (Queen’s University -
Canada), and Mark Tadajewski (University of Leicester - UK). The
editorial advisory board includes 30 outstanding scholars
representing eight different countries. The
Journal of Historical Research in
Marketing will focus on marketing history and the history
of marketing thought. Marketing is defined broadly to include the
activities involved in commercial exchange and other commercial-like
activities. Marketing history includes, but is not limited to, the
histories of advertising, retailing, channels of distribution,
product design & branding, pricing strategies, and consumption
behaviour - all studied from the perspective of companies,
industries, or even whole economies. The history of marketing
thought examines the histories of marketing ideas, concepts,
theories, and schools of marketing thought including the lives and
times of marketing thinkers. This includes biographical studies as
well as histories of institutions and associations involved in the
development of the marketing discipline. Historiographic essays
will also be welcome as long as they are grounded in a marketing
context. The Journal of
Historical Research in Marketing welcomes high quality,
original research that encompasses a broad range of historical
approaches, philosophical positions, and methodologies. The
unifying theme is its historical orientation.
More details will
be made available soon and we expect to begin publication in early
2009. Please monitor the CHARM website at
http://www.charmassociation.org/ for more information.
13th Biennial Conference on Historical Analysis &
Research in Marketing (CHARM) Makes History!
The 13th
CHARM was hosted by the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising &
Marketing History at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, May
17 through 20, 2007. Participation as measured in the number of
papers presented was second only to the 2005 CHARM held in Long
Beach CA. Keynote speaker,
Alan Andreasen of the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown
University, spoke
on “The Evolution of Social Marketing Thought in the Discipline”.
Distinguished speaker Alan Richardson of the Schulich
School of Business at York University gave an inspiring presentation
about “The History of Accounting History”.
Two historically
important decisions were made at the CHARM general membership
meeting on Sunday, May 20. CHARM members approved the proposal by
Mark Tadajewski of the University of Leicester to host the
2009 CHARM conference at
the university’s new conference facility in Leicester, England. The
dates for the 2009 CHARM are Thursday, May 28th through
Sunday, May 31, so mark your calendars now. Local arrangements
chair will be Mark Tadajewski and the program chair is Bill Keep of
Quinnipiac University. A full Call for Papers will be distributed
soon. This marks the first time in CHARM’s history that the
conference will be held outside of North America. At that Sunday
general meeting there was also lengthy discussion of the possibility
of beginning publication of a new
marketing history journal. Immediately following the
conference, a committee consisting of Brian Jones, Eric Shaw, Peggy
Cunningham, Mark Tadajewski, and Terry Witkowski prepared a proposal
for a new journal which was submitted to Emerald Publishing. The
response to that proposal is noted above.
CHARM Counterfactuals
- by Terry Witkowski
As many
RIM readers know, our
group’s initial meeting was called the “First North American
Workshop on Historical Research in Marketing” and was held at
Michigan State University in June, 1983. The late Stan Hollander
organized this confab and ever since has been most deservingly
honored as our small group’s founding father.
But what if Stan
had not hosted this first meeting? Would there ever have been a
CHARM? Might have the history of research in marketing history
unfolded differently?
These “what if”
questions are called counterfactuals. Some historians dismiss such
speculations. The role of the historian is to uncover evidence of
what truly happened and then organize findings into a meaningful
narrative. Creating alternative histories is mere story telling,
something best left to fiction writers.
Other historians
(Ferguson 1997) argue that counterfactual thinking is relevant to
historical analysis. History, in this view, may be influenced by
various contingencies, accidental factors, and the free will of
individuals. Just as a stochastic “uncertainty principle” applies
in the sciences, an analogous mechanism exists in history. The
opposing philosophy, determinism, sees history as the product of
general causes, such as geography or large social and economic
trends, that are fairly impervious to chance events.
Counterfactuals
need to be plausible. For example, it is not unimaginable that
something could have happened in Stan’s personal or professional
life that would have steered him on a different scholarly course in
the 1980s. Without his first workshop, nothing like CHARM might
ever have taken place and the subsequent research stream in
marketing history would have been much diminished.
Determinism argues
differently. It would say the idea of rehabilitating marketing
history had risen in several minds simultaneously. Roger Dickinson,
Ron Fullerton, Rick Pollay, Ron Savitt, Eric Shaw, and others
contributed to the first workshop, as well as to subsequent
meetings, and someone in this group or from elsewhere in the field
would have eventually put together a marketing history conference.
Similar debates
could be had about other phenomena in the history of marketing and
marketing thought. Was the invention of the department store, which
took place more or less simultaneously in 19th century
New York and Paris, predestined by macro forces or dependent upon
the acts of entrepreneurs? Was the drift toward managerial thinking
in the marketing literature inevitable or did it rest on the
influence of a few thought leaders such as Philip Kotler?
Whether these
questions are answerable or not, engaging our counterfactual
imagination keeps us very much aware of different layers of
causation, thus improving our historical analysis and research in
marketing.
Ferguson, Niall
(1997), “Virtual History: Towards a ‘Chaotic’ Theory of the Past,”
in Niall Ferguson (ed.), Virtual
History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals, New York:
Basic Books, pp. 1-90.
CHARM Website Enhancements
Please check out
the following improvements and additions to the CHARM website.
-
The URL has
been changed to
http://www.charmassociation.org/ which will make it easier
to find and easier to remember, but go ahead and bookmark it
anyway!
-
Blaine Branchik,
the webmaster for CHARM and program chair for the 2007
conference, interviewed several participants at the 2007 CHARM
conference for their views about why they study marketing
history. The “Why
Marketing History” video is up and available
for your interest and entertainment. You can access it via the
home page (the link is in the body of the home page) or via the
About the Conference link.
-
CHARM is
sponsoring a contest to design a new logo for the association
and we want your contribution. The winning entrant will receive
a new Ipod shuffle. Check the
CHARM home page for more contest details.
-
Coming soon
(actually, this has already begun and will unfold over the next
few weeks) – ALL of the proceedings of the marketing history
conferences beginning with the first conference in 1983 through
to and including the 2005 CHARM proceedings will be available in
full and in PDF format and FREE. As of the writing of this
newsletter, the 1983 proceedings has been posted and all others
have been copied into PDF format waiting to be posted on the
website. We hope this will increase access to the fine body of
historical research that has been presented at past CHARM
conferences, much of which is not available anywhere else.
***
CALLS FOR PAPERS ***
The Business
History Conference's 2008 annual meeting will be held in Sacramento,
California, April 10-12, hosted by the California State University
at Sacramento. Its theme is "Expanding Connections for Business
History," with the goal of reaching across disciplines and
audiences. It will focus on what business history offers to other
fields of scholarship, as well as what business historians can learn
from other scholarly perspectives. In addition, both the opening
plenary and a roundtable will explore how business historians can
work with journalists to extend our reach into the public arena.
Sessions will highlight research that is comparative, that
contextualizes its subjects, or that examines any of the complex
interactions that business activities involve. The conference will
expand business history's intellectual connections and approaches,
broadening our outreach to both scholarly and public audiences. For
the full call for papers, see
http://www.thebhc.org/annmeet/call08.html.
The deadline for proposals is 24 September 2007.
Leisure, Tourism
and the 19th Century Resort, the 11th annual
Salve Regina University conference about Cultural and Historic
Preservation is on October 18-20, 2007 in Newport Rhode Island. For
more information check
http://www.salve.edu/heritage/annualconferences/2007/
Histories of
Industrial Hazard – Dangerous Trade: Histories of Industrial Hazard
across a Globalizing World on December 13-15, 2007 at Stony Brook
University, NY focuses on the late 19th and early 20th
century and the later 20th century periods of economic
integration. For more information check
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-Business&month=0612&week=b&msg=I%2bvXK/1xEbs6dgw7XKKYpQ
***
THE LITERATURE KEEPS GROWING
***
Journal of Macromarketing:
-
Volume 27,
number 1, the March 2007 issue is a special issue on “The Future
of Marketing’s Past” featuring seven of the best papers from the
2005 CHARM conference
-
Volume 26,
number 2, the December 2006 issue is the silver anniversary
issue of JMM and includes much throughout of historical interest
as well as “Historical Research in the Journal of
Macromarketing, 1981 – 2005” by Brian Jones & Eric Shaw
Marketing Theory:
-
Volume 6,
number 4, the December 2006 issue includes “Remembering
Motivation Research: Toward an Alternative Genealogy of
Interpretive Consumer Research” by Mark Tadajewski
-
Volume 6,
number 2, the June 2006 issue includes “The Ordering of
Marketing Theory: The Influence of McCarthyism and the Cold War”
by Mark Tadajewski
A special issue of
the European Business Review,
volume 19, number 2, 2007 features “Pioneers in Business Education”
including:
-
“Theodore N.
Beckman (1895 – 1973): External Manifestations of the Man” by
Brian Jones
-
“How Philip
Kotler Has Helped to Shape the Field of Marketing” by Maureen
Bourassa, Peggy Cunningham, and Jay Handelman
Recent selections from Roger Dickinson’s book shelf…(with
apologies from the RIM editor for any missing citation information)…
The Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from
1600 to Modern Times,
W.W. Norton
The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall and Deadly Persistence of the
Product that Defined America,
Basic Books.
Ambitious Brew: The Store of American Beer,
Maureen Ogle
Great American Beer: 50 Brands That Shaped the 20th
Century,
Christopher O’Hara
Advertising on Trial: Consumer Activism and Corporate Public
Relations in the 1930s,
Inger Stole, University of Illinois Press
Marketing Science,
Volume 25, number 6 (November – December 2006) editorial: “Fifty
Years of Marketing Science” by Steven M. Shugan
“Listen and Learn:
A Brief History of Oral History” in the
Wall Street Journal,
July 27, 2007, by Bari Weiss, page W13
*******
If you have news
or other information relevant to readers of RIM, please contact
Brian Jones. If you wish to be removed from the RIM email
distribution list, please notify Brian at
bjones1@quinnipiac.edu
Historically
yours,
Brian
D.G. Brian Jones,
PhD
Professor of Marketing
School of Business / SB-DNF
Quinnipiac University
275 Mount Carmel Avenue
Hamden, CT 06518
phone: (203)
582-3753
fax: (203) 582-8664
bjones1@quinnipiac.edu
