CHARM (Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing) is a scholarly organization devoted primarily to organizing and managing the biennial CHARM conference and more generally to supporting historical research in marketing by providing information and resources through this website.
The biennial conference has provided a venue for leading academics from around the world to share, discuss and support research in all areas of marketing history and the history of marketing thought.
Photo: D.G. Brian Jones
Photo credit: D.G. Brian Jones
Research has included such areas as advertising, biography, branding, corporate histories, innovation, international marketing, practice, retailing, segments, and theory and thought.
CHARM publishes its proceedings (authors retain copyright), all of which can be found here, and through 2023 has published over 700 full papers and extended abstracts.
During the 1990’s, alliances with leading journals such as the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and Journal of Macromarketing resulted in many CHARM papers being published in those journals.
In 2009, CHARM sponsored the founding of the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing (JHRM) which, since then, has been published by Emerald Publishing. The inaugural issue of JHRM published a full history of CHARM covering the period from 1983 to 2009.
Photo: D.G. Brian Jones
CHARM is unique in the world of academic conferences, because of the following qualities:
Small Size: the conference is kept relatively small so that multiple tracking of sessions is minimized and participants can therefore attend all or most of the sessions.
Extends beyond the formal sessions: most meals are included in the conference registration which keeps participants together, exchanging ideas, and continuing discussions. In fact, the Conference is intended to be more like a workshop, as the first was called in 1983, than a typical academic conference.
Photo: D.G. Brian Jones
Photo: D.G. Brian Jones
Why do researchers study marketing history?
Below is a video that seeks to answer this question. It was created at the 13th CHARM conference in 2007, held at Duke University.