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The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of the Conferences on Historical Analysis & Research in Marketing (CHARM) from their inception in 1983 through 2007 focusing on the influence of Stanley C. Hollander, who co‐founded the CHARM conference and whose drive and determination fueled its growth for the first 20 years.

This study uses traditional historical narrative based on personal interviews, archival research, and content analysis of CHARM Proceedings.

The history of CHARM is described and Hollander's role in developing the conference is highlighted.

There is no written history of CHARM. This story is a major part of Hollander's legacy.

Whilst plastic packaging has recently been critiqued for its detrimental effects on the environment, it is largely overlooked in histories of food retailing. This paper presents a historical perspective on plastic packaging, highlighting its role in transforming UK food retailing throughout the middle to late twentieth century.

This paper is based on an analysis of the Marks & Spencer Company Archive, supplemented by company histories and biographical sources. Three examples were purposively selected based on their technologically innovative role in maintaining and enhancing Marks & Spencer's core values.

The analysis highlights plastic packaging's significance in enabling Marks & Spencer's product development process whilst maintaining and enhancing the company's core values of standards, quality, safety, freshness, hygiene and convenience. The examples demonstrate the role of plastics in technological innovation, achieving key commercial objectives in product development and contributing to the transformation of food retailing.

The research focuses on three specific examples of packaging innovation, drawing out their wider implications for socio-technical change in UK food retailing.

This historical research suggests that greater attention should be paid to plastic packaging including its material properties and the services it provides, moving beyond a blanket condemnation by acknowledging its multiple affordances in the food sector. These historical insights are instructive when thinking about the future of retailing and shopping in the context of the need for better environmental outcomes.

The purpose of this article is to review the historical development of William Davidson's Retailing Management book that spanned six editions and 35 years and to evaluate its impact on retailing practice and education during that time period.

A participation-observation approach is used by the author whose personal involvement as a co-author of Davidson's book and as a professional colleague of Davidson provided him with unique insights into the development of retailing management and its impact on the profession of retailing. A critical review of Davidson's book is informed by personal reflections of the author.

The 50 years during which Davidson was an active scholar, consultant and businessman were very dynamic in terms of the changes that took place in the environment of retailing, the practice of retailing and the study of retailing. Throughout this period, the academic discipline of retailing changed a great deal, moving through eight very significant intellectual transitions. Davidson was an important participant and contributor to the advancement of the study of retailing throughout this half-century and led the move through most of these great transitions. This contribution is evident in the evolution of retailing management over its 35-year history.

No such prior review and critical evaluation has been published.

Through an account of the layout, operations, and four main product lines of a small Chicago bookstore between 1938 and 1947, the purpose of this paper is to show how a neighborhood retail establishment reacted to the sweeping events of the Great Depression and World War II.

The research is based upon multiple primary data sources including store financial records, family photographs, representative artifacts and ephemera, oral history interviews, and period retailing literature.

Located in an area of Chicago heavily populated by Polish and Jewish immigrants and their children, General Book Store was a traditional mom and pop operation. The mix of its product lines – books and magazines, model kits, greeting cards, and camera supplies and photo‐finishing – evolved over time while always connecting customers to the national experience. The store afforded its owners a modest, but upwardly mobile middle‐class life style.

Although much has been written on large‐scale retailing, marketing historians have conducted very little research on small‐scale retailing in the USA. This study documents the intermingling of a business and a household economy and how the management of merchandise assortments and maintenance of customer relationships depended upon both owner interests and the opportunities and constraints presented by environmental forces.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the challenges and rewards of engaging in the inextricably intertwined activities of studying and teaching marketing history. The secondary purpose is to encourage marketing scholars to expand work in this area.

The approach invokes the memoir and that format traces the author personal development in the field of marketing history over 30 years. It discusses what the author learned, how he learned, and how these lessons can be applied.

The paper offers several findings: marketing history can be part of every marketing course; students should be engaged in the development and application of historical findings; marketing scholars must develop an understanding of historical methods as a means of supporting research and teaching; and marketing history should eventually be seen in marketing as economic history is seen in economics.

The paper puts forth an approach for undertaking historical research in marketing and suggests how to use those findings in teaching marketing history. The emphasis focuses on engaging students with the caveat that history is not predictive. The goal is to put marketing events in their proper context, to understand how they develop and how they play out. Marketing history has its own intrinsic value but also provides a new dimension for decision making.

The paper uses a first person narrative of working in developing a field, a historic device not frequently found in marketing. It also represents a historiography of marketing history.

This paper calls for a reconsideration of standard narratives regarding the role of small, independent retailers for twentieth‐century urban communities. The paper aims to discuss the issues.

Taking the German city of Bremen as an example, the paper problematizes the nostalgic treatment of independent “Aunt Emma” (or “mom‐and‐pop”) stores in Germany during the last quarter of the century, by recounting the often conflict‐laden history of small retailers within the urban community. It draws on primary documents from retail associations, the chamber of commerce, municipal administrations, as well as media coverage.

The romanticization of the corner grocer overlooked the often divisive role of small store‐keepers in the interwar years as well as the social considerations behind some forms of retail modernization.

Beyond the particular examples of Bremen or even Germany, the paper urges historians of modern retailing to critically analyze the everyday role shops and shopkeepers have played within their communities without at the same time embracing a market‐liberal narrative of retail modernization as a function of consumer demand.

Three basic approaches to retail institutional change can be discerned in the last 30 years. The first contends that institutional evolution is a function of developments in the socio‐economic environment. The second argues that change occurs in a cyclical fashion. The third considers inter‐institutional conflict to be the mainspring of retail change. None of those approaches is found to be entirely satisfactory, and a series of combination theories has been posited. It is argued that regional institutional change is the result of environmental forces and a cycle‐like sequence of inter‐institutional conflict.

The purpose of this paper is to present a view of how a retail chain store and its marketing strategies impacted on shopping habits in twentieth century Ireland.

Primary and secondary sources include company documents, oral history and press reports. Background social, political and economic factors are considered in conjunction with the methods this firm used to build customer-driven managed marketing systems and teams of good staff relationships.

Woolworth's Irish stores responded to changing tastes and needs of consumers throughout Ireland. The Irish market required skilful techniques to overcome widening divisions within customer profiles to accommodate increasing north-south and urban-rural patterns. Welcomed by shoppers of all ages and genders, this firm's contribution to Ireland's retailing and wider commercial scene was innovative, popular, flexible and influential.

The overview of this well-known retail chain store's experience in twentieth century Ireland can provide scholars with building blocks on which to expand knowledge and develop further understanding of a largely un-tapped field of research within the history of marketing in Ireland.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the conservation and contemporary management of three nineteenth‐century shopping passages: the Galleries Saint‐Hubert in Brussels, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan and the Passage in The Hague. The submission of the Galleries Saint‐Hubert to the World Heritage Tentative List in 2008, presents a unique opportunity for studying this typology in its contemporary environment.

The authors’ research questions are: what are the characteristics of passages? what are their authentic values? and how can the authenticity of these buildings be conserved by their contemporary management? The applied methodology is a cross‐case‐comparison, based on the definition of authenticity as presented in the Nara Document on Authenticity. The analysis is presented in the form of a matrix.

The findings show that the significant value of passages does not only include the architecture of the building but also the versatility of its program and its present urban role. It is only by conserving this combination that these buildings can be conserved in their full richness of authenticity.

Criteria for transnational inclusion in the World Heritage List of several nineteenth‐century passages are suggested as the matrix used for cross‐case‐comparison may be applied to analyse other case studies of passages, as well as for other types of heritage where authenticity of the site is threatened by uncontrolled retail development.

Although passages have been studied extensively within the field of architectural history, retail history and socio‐cultural studies, hardly any previous research had focused on the preservation and contemporary management of this building type.