Marketing books often celebrate new inventions, while archives reveal older examples of supposedly novel practices. Investigating that tension is part of the work associated with CHARM, the Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing. Beginning in 1983, its meetings established a recurring setting for discussing historical evidence, business practices and the development of marketing ideas. Its contribution was a durable arrangement for producing knowledge about marketing, rather than another advertising technique.
The starting point was Michigan State University. Stanley C. Hollander organised the first meeting there in 1983 under the title North American Workshop on Historical Research in Marketing. The CHARM Association itself was established in 2003. Separating these dates matters: a scholarly network can depend on personal and university support for years before acquiring its own formal organisation (CHARM Association, n.d.a; n.d.b).
A beginning in 1983, but not the beginning of marketing history
A careful account of CHARM must leave earlier research visible. Ronald Savitt’s 1980 article Historical Research in Marketing discussed the value of historical enquiry and a method for undertaking it. Published in the Journal of Marketing, it preceded the first workshop (Savitt, 1980). Historical research did not need to be invented in 1983. The distinctive development was a specialised community in which it could be discussed repeatedly.
The first proceedings’ preface is unusually informative. Hollander and Savitt acknowledged earlier meetings in Toronto in 1958, historical sessions within the American Marketing Association and an event in Japan. They therefore did not claim an unqualified world first. They also announced plans for another workshop in 1985 (Hollander and Savitt, 1983, pp. iv-vi).
This separates an individual event from the formation of research infrastructure. A meeting can draw attention to a subject. Recurring meetings make it possible to revisit questions, respond to criticism and connect results that initially developed separately. CHARM’s historical significance lies especially in that continuity. It can be described more accurately through this achievement than through a sweeping claim that nobody had previously studied marketing historically.
The distinction also prevents a misleading opposition between isolated pioneers and a fully formed discipline. Research can exist before a specialist organisation, while an organisation can help change the conditions under which research continues. The workshop inherited questions and knowledge. It added a repeated opportunity to work on them collectively.
Stanley Hollander and the work behind a conference
Hollander was a retailing scholar with a strong interest in historical and wider social questions. The Association’s account identifies Ronald Savitt and William Lazer as members of the early advisory nucleus. It also acknowledges colleagues and proceedings editors whose contributions supported the meetings (CHARM Association, n.d.b).
This background matters because scholarly communities require more than persuasive ideas. Someone has to bring together participants, facilities, support, programmes and publications. That work can disappear from histories organised entirely around influential theories. In CHARM’s case, it forms part of Hollander’s contribution: helping turn dispersed interests into a sustained conversation.
Jones, Shaw and Goldring’s 2009 account examined the conference’s development from 1983 through 2007, focusing particularly on Hollander. They combined interviews, archival investigation and analysis of the proceedings (Jones, Shaw and Goldring, 2009). The combination illustrates how the history of a scholarly meeting can itself become a historical research project, rather than simply an anniversary recollection.
A founder’s importance should nevertheless not become the only explanation. Other people must write papers, organise later events and introduce new participants if a conference is to continue. Recognising their work makes Hollander’s role more precise. His influence included enabling connections that extended beyond his own publications and research subjects.
This is a useful perspective on the history of knowledge generally. A field can depend on work that produces no named theory of its own. Arranging an environment in which others can challenge, compare and develop their findings can have lasting intellectual effects. CHARM makes this usually less visible contribution easier to recognise.
What the first programme reveals
The 1983 volume ranged across methods and substantive subjects. Noel J. Stowe addressed the periodisation of marketing thought; Terence Nevett considered biography; Ronald Savitt examined historical data. Studies of a shopping street, tools and gasoline marketing appeared alongside these methodological concerns (Hollander and Savitt, 1983).
Such a programme indicates why marketing history extends beyond a chronology of famous campaigns. Researchers can investigate how goods moved, what practitioners believed and what evidence survives. An advertisement is not the entire history of a market. A textbook is equally not a complete account of what firms actually did. Different questions require different materials.
For example, studying a shopping street can connect commercial geography, customers and retail formats. Studying tools can bring professional users and distribution arrangements into the picture. These are analytical possibilities suggested by the subjects, rather than findings attributed to articles that have not been read in full here. A contents page establishes the presence of a topic, not the truth of every possible argument about it.
The breadth nevertheless helps explain the workshop’s value. Subjects did not have to fit one theoretical model before they could be discussed together. Their shared concern was change and continuity over time. A relatively small meeting could therefore connect research that might otherwise have remained divided between advertising, distribution, consumer behaviour and the study of ideas.
The programme also reminds readers that the boundaries of a field are choices. Calling something marketing history can invite material from beyond a conventional marketing department. That does not mean every historical commercial activity automatically counts as modern marketing. It means the relevance of a subject should be argued rather than decided solely by today’s disciplinary labels.
Marketing practice and marketing thought have different histories
The Journal of Historical Research in Marketing explicitly distinguishes the history of practices from the history of ideas. Its scope includes activities such as advertising, distribution and pricing, together with concepts, theories, schools of thought and the people associated with them (Emerald Publishing, n.d.).
The distinction is essential. A company can address different groups of customers before a later article gives that practice a systematic conceptual description. Conversely, a textbook can recommend a procedure that a particular firm scarcely uses. Reading publications does not automatically reveal business practice, while studying company records does not fully explain the development and circulation of professional terminology.
CHARM is important because its format gives both kinds of enquiry room. The development of an academic concept can appear alongside the history of a retailer. This creates opportunities to investigate connections without assuming that theory and practice are identical. Did an idea guide decisions, organise existing experience or only later become an explanation of earlier activity? These are distinct historical questions.
The same approach changes how pioneers are identified. One person can name a concept without inventing the activity. Another can develop a practical solution without leaving a celebrated theoretical label. Separating these contributions allows both to be recognised. It prevents the history of a discipline from becoming merely a succession of famous books and their authors.
It also makes disagreement more informative. Researchers using different evidence may not be contradicting one another if they are studying different things. A first use in an academic publication and an earlier example in a business archive can coexist. Clarifying the object of the claim is often more valuable than forcing the evidence into a single date of invention.
The recurring problem of dividing history into eras
Hollander, Rassuli, Jones and Dix examined the purposes and limitations of periodisation in 2005. Their article compared 28 established schemes drawn from marketing history, the history of marketing thought and business history (Hollander et al., 2005). Related work on periodisation appears in the contents of CHARM’s 1997 and 2003 proceedings (CHARM Proceedings, 1997; 2003).
This sequence illustrates how a research question can be pursued across several years. It does not prove that every later idea was already present in an earlier conference paper. It does document continuing engagement with the same problem. That process is lost if the history of research records only the final date of publication in a journal.
Periodisation helps readers navigate long developments. Dividing time into sections can make a complicated account intelligible. It can also conceal differences between countries, industries and organisations. A supposed production era does not establish that no firm investigated customers during those years. A digital era does not mean that physical sales channels disappeared.
A period boundary should therefore follow from the question under investigation. The development of advertising media may have different turning points from the history of retail law or consumer organisations. A common set of dates can be useful for one subject and misleading for another. CHARM provided a setting in which these choices could themselves become objects of discussion.
This is more than a technical concern about how chapters are arranged. An era can imply a causal account: an older logic gave way to a newer one. If activities actually overlapped, the chapter structure can exaggerate the change. Historical research needs to ask whether a boundary describes evidence or simply makes the story easier to tell.
The Association’s establishment in 2003
The organisational change in 2003 should remain separate from the first meeting. According to the official account, the CHARM Association was founded to continue organising and managing the conference (CHARM Association, n.d.b). Its bylaws identify purposes including encouraging historical interest, arranging conferences and supporting scholarly work (CHARM Association, n.d.c).
This can be interpreted as a transition towards more durable responsibility. A formal organisation can distribute tasks, specify duties and create arrangements for continuation. None of that determines whether an individual research argument is sound. It does explain how the conditions for recurring enquiry can be made less dependent on informal coordination.
For a small specialist community, this matters particularly. A committed individual can make a great deal possible and also become an organisational bottleneck. Transferable responsibilities and rules help activity continue through changes of personnel. The establishment of an association consequently belongs to intellectual history, even when it seems less dramatic than the announcement of a new theory.
The dates 1983 and 2003 therefore identify different achievements: creating a recurring forum and later strengthening its organisational basis. Combining them erases the preceding twenty years. Mentioning only the first workshop, however, underestimates the later work needed to preserve its continuity under changing conditions.
The sequence also discourages the assumption that institutions emerge fully formed. What later looks like an established association can begin with a much smaller arrangement. Its eventual durability is an outcome requiring explanation, rather than something that should be projected backwards into its first meeting.
Internationalisation is more than a change of venue
CHARM’s official history describes a stronger international orientation from 2003, with venues in North America and Europe. Its photographic record includes Kingston in 1997 and Copenhagen in 2013 (CHARM Association, n.d.a). Changing locations can support international participation, but it does not by itself establish that the subjects, sources and languages of research have become equally diverse.
The 2003 proceedings offer concrete evidence of a wider agenda. Their contents include work on Japan, British and Irish retail regulation, Chinese advertising and African American marketing actors (CHARM Proceedings, 2003). These topics extend beyond the history of major American brands. Their presence does not, on its own, demonstrate complete geographical balance or a finished process of internationalisation.
The diversity makes different comparisons possible. A concept can be received at different times in different countries. Similar retail arrangements can develop under different legal conditions. A model built from American evidence may consequently explain another country’s experience imperfectly. International history is especially valuable when differences are investigated as historical circumstances, rather than treated as departures from a single standard path.
Translation creates another layer. A publication written to answer one professional debate can acquire a different use in another language. Its first publication date therefore captures only part of its influence. Researchers with different language and archival skills can reveal these shifts when they work together.
An international research community also has to confront practical inequalities. Sources may survive unevenly; travel and access can be difficult; published literature may privilege particular languages. These are analytical considerations, not a claim that CHARM has resolved every such problem. They explain why internationalisation remains a research and organisational task rather than a label guaranteed by a conference location.
Proceedings preserve the development of research
The Carleton University Library proceedings archive states that it aims to make material formerly distributed in print and electronic form more widely available (CHARM Proceedings, n.d.). It therefore preserves access to contributions that did not necessarily become well-known journal articles.
Such an archive records more than finished conclusions. It shows which questions were being asked and which subjects were brought together at a particular moment. Recurring themes can be followed across volumes. Topics that attracted attention only briefly also remain visible. That uneven development can be informative in its own right.
CHARM’s own description reports more than 700 full papers and extended abstracts through 2023 (CHARM Association, n.d.d). This is a dated institutional count, not a newly calculated total for October 2026. It also combines different publication types. A substantial article and a short account of proposed research should not be assumed to offer the same amount of evidence.
Open access consequently does not remove the need for source criticism. An abstract can identify a research approach without documenting every claim. A paper can change substantially before later publication. Readers still need to establish which version they are using and what that version can support. An archive enables this work; it does not perform the interpretation automatically.
The distinction is especially useful when following a concept across time. A conference version may record uncertainty that a later publication expresses differently. A familiar idea can have a longer and less straightforward development than its standard citation suggests. Proceedings help preserve that history of revision.
Recognition and the next generation
The Stanley C. Hollander Best Paper Award and the David D. Monieson Best Student Paper Award have been part of the conference since 1997. The official account also recalls Monieson’s doctoral seminar on the philosophy and history of marketing thought at Queen’s University between 1983 and 1992 (CHARM Association, n.d.b; n.d.e).
Recognition contributes to the continuation of a research field. A subject does not remain active merely because established scholars publish about it. New researchers need informed interlocutors, opportunities to present their work and standards they can understand. An award can draw attention to a contribution; teaching and workshops help develop the knowledge required to produce it.
Awards are nevertheless not substitutes for assessing an argument. They show that work received particular recognition within a community. Its conclusions still have to be judged through evidence and method. This distinction matters in a field where celebrated names can too easily become a guarantee that a historical story is correct.
The value of recognition is therefore not a permanent hierarchy of topics or authors. It is the visibility and continuation of research. A field benefits when new participants can change its questions. Continuity means sustaining conditions for informed disagreement, rather than protecting the same answers indefinitely.
A specialised journal from 2009
CHARM supported the founding of the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing in 2009, with publication by Emerald (CHARM Association, n.d.d). The journal added a specialised publication setting to the conference. The two serve related but different purposes: meetings concentrate discussion, while a journal offers an ongoing place for developed research contributions.
The journal also accommodates work on archival resources and important older books through its Sources of Historical Research in Marketing and Forgotten Classics sections (Emerald Publishing, n.d.). Historical scholarship thus includes creating access to evidence and earlier knowledge, not only producing new narratives.
Introducing an archive can make later investigations possible. Re-reading an overlooked book can alter an established attribution. Both activities strengthen the research base even when they do not immediately produce a new general theory. Knowledge of available sources is itself a scholarly resource.
The institutional development is best understood as an interaction. A workshop, an archive and a journal create different opportunities for visibility and scrutiny. None fully replaces the others. Their connection can nevertheless help move a project out of isolation and into a discussion that lasts beyond an individual presentation.
A substantive result: how stable are market shares?
Peter Golder’s 2000 article illustrated historical method by examining an established proposition about long-term market-share stability. Analysis of more than 650 brands in 100 categories raised questions about the longevity of that stability (Golder, 2000). The article is an example of the intellectual contribution of historical marketing research; it is not presented here as the direct product of a CHARM meeting without evidence of that connection.
The case demonstrates why historical enquiry can do more than supply background. A short observation window can suggest stability, while a longer period reveals substantial movement. Extending the investigation can therefore change the proposition under examination, rather than merely add years to a chronology.
A regularity observed under particular conditions is not necessarily timeless. This is relevant to claims about leadership, brand strength and the persistence of competitive advantage. Historical research encourages the temporal and institutional boundaries of such claims to be specified.
It does not thereby supply a certain forecast. Evidence that market shares changed previously does not determine the timing of the next change. The immediate gain is a better account of what the evidence supports. History can correct excessive confidence without replacing it with a new universal certainty.
Advertising history must examine its own narratives
Stefan Schwarzkopf’s 2011 article considered methodological and theoretical challenges in advertising history, including the influence of modernisation, Americanisation and semiotic perspectives on historical accounts (Schwarzkopf, 2011). Source criticism thus concerns the researcher’s explanatory framework as well as the surviving advertisements.
An Americanisation narrative can reveal connections while making local contributions less visible. An emphasis on signs can illuminate meanings while giving less attention to the organisation of production. These are analytical implications, rather than blanket judgements about all work using those perspectives.
For a research forum, self-examination is particularly important. Different approaches need not merely coexist. They can expose where familiar explanations become too narrow. A community becomes more useful when its preferred stories remain open to scrutiny.
This separates scholarly marketing history from a celebration of successful brands. Conflicts, excluded groups and unsuccessful objectives also belong in the field. The past does not need to be arranged retrospectively into a continuous success story to be interesting. Discontinuities may explain why some practices persisted and others disappeared.
A CHARM example: comparing radio and internet advertising
Lilly Anne Buchwitz’s 2015 CHARM paper proposed a comparative model of radio and internet advertising history. Its four phases concerned technology, content, advertising and advertising becoming content. The interpretative study compared developments and reactions across the two media (Buchwitz, 2015).
The approach demonstrates how a conference contribution can move beyond collecting old examples. Developments separated in time are examined through a shared question: how does a communication technology become an economically supported medium? That brings financing, acceptance and boundaries between content and promotion into the same discussion.
Such a comparison does not establish that every medium must follow an identical sequence. A model can reveal similarities and also smooth away differences. Its value depends on which events are compared and which counterexamples are considered. This is an analytical qualification, not a claim that the paper demonstrated a universal law of media development.
For contemporary discussions, the value is in replacing an assertion of absolute novelty with an examinable comparison. Researchers can ask which conflicts recur and which conditions differ. The past becomes a way of testing an initially attractive explanation, rather than a store of convenient analogies.
Preserving sources makes debate possible
A British comparison illustrates the material foundation of this work. The History of Advertising Trust dates its establishment to 1976. Its account traces an exhibition proposal towards the need for a lasting archive and study centre, including the preservation of materials being discarded elsewhere (History of Advertising Trust, n.d.).
What a company regards as completed working material can become essential to later research. A draft, price list or abandoned plan may reveal decisions that a finished advertisement does not disclose. A document’s historical significance is consequently different from its original business usefulness.
Archives and conferences perform different tasks. Collections preserve evidence and make it discoverable. Meetings develop questions through which that evidence can be investigated. The two are connected without every collection already constituting a research study or every meeting providing a complete account of archival holdings.
Digitisation does not remove selection. A scan can circulate easily only if the document survived and someone selected it. An online collection may therefore offer a different view from the full working process of a business. Researchers still need to ask which firms are represented, what periods are missing and whose voices were recorded.
This creates a responsibility for popular marketing history too. A readily available advertisement is a useful starting point, but not proof that it was typical, effective or influential. Those propositions require further evidence. A specialist community contributes by continuing to ask such questions and drawing attention to both collections and gaps.
Earlier and international institutional comparisons
The Business History Conference identifies 1954 as its founding year and records annual meetings from 1958. Its subject is business history more broadly (Business History Conference, n.d.). This is an important earlier comparison, but not an identical organisation under another name. Marketing can be studied within corporate development there, while CHARM makes it the central focus.
For Japan, the Institute of Developing Economies bibliography records a 1978 volume from the third Fuji Conference on marketing and finance during industrialisation. Its entries include comparisons involving the United States, Japan and Britain and work on the automobile industry (Institute of Developing Economies, n.d.). The publication year should not be assumed to be the date on which the meeting took place.
Duke University’s Hartman Center, established in 1992 to collect and encourage the use of material concerning advertising history and related subjects, provides a different comparison (Duke University Libraries, n.d.). Its archival function differs from that of a biennial meeting.
These examples clarify CHARM’s distinctive role without displacing other traditions. A field can be supported collectively by conferences, libraries, archives and journals. The most important institution depends on whether the question concerns discussion, preservation, education or publication. A defensible history explains these contributions rather than forcing them into a single ranking.
From a historical companion to artificial intelligence
The Routledge Companion to Marketing History, edited by Jones and Tadajewski, brings together practices and national histories. Its publisher’s contents identify contributions by scholars including Shaw, Witkowski, Schwarzkopf, Fullerton, Petty, Twede and Tamilia (Jones and Tadajewski, 2016). It illustrates the field’s breadth; its existence is not treated as evidence that CHARM institutionally produced every related publication.
In 2026, Chaney and Michel continued to discuss the contribution of historical approaches and the challenges of methodological coherence (Chaney and Michel, 2026). Institutional development therefore does not mean that foundational questions have been settled. A growing field still has to clarify how it evaluates evidence and what kinds of explanation it seeks.
As available on 22 October 2026, CHARM’s call for its planned 2027 Pamplona conference addresses marketing history in the age of artificial intelligence. It invites attention to longer histories of automation, prediction and data-related practices (CHARM Association, 2026). This is an announced research agenda, not a report on an event that has already happened.
The connection with the original project is clear. History need not dismiss innovation or explain the present through one attractive anecdote. It asks what changes under new conditions and which problems recur. Since 1983, CHARM has sustained a setting for that enquiry. Its place in marketing history lies in the continuing collective work of making knowledge about marketing more open to evidence and challenge.
References
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Chaney, D. and Michel, G. (2026) ‘The turn to historical approaches in marketing research’, Recherche et Applications en Marketing (English Edition), 41(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/20515707251406496.
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