American Marketing Association

The American Marketing Association (AMA) is a professional association for marketing professionals with 30,000 members as of 2012. It has 76 professional chapters and 250 collegiate chapters across the United States.^[1]

The AMA was formed in 1937 from the merger of two predecessor organizations, the National Association of Marketing Teachers and the American Marketing Society. It also publishes a number of handbooks and research monographs.^[2] The AMA publishes the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Journal of International Marketing, and Marketing News.

Organization

The American Marketing Association has a board of directors that are elected annually by its members^[3] and a set of councils that are appointed. The headquarters is located in Chicago, Il. Russ Klein was named CEO in 2014.^[4]

In 2017, the association appointed Jeremy Van Ek as its Chief Operations Officer and Jennifer Faris Severns as its new Chief Experience Officer.^[5]

Conferences

As the global leader in marketing knowledge, the American Marketing Association hosts a broad range of conferences, trainings, and virtual events catering to marketers, researchers, and academicians in all stages of their careers. The Summer AMA Academic Conference has its roots in the first meeting of the National Association of Marketing Teachers. It is held in conjunction with AMA Academic Placement - where the majority of first-round interviews for tenure-track marketing faculty positions are held. AMA's International Collegiate Conference offers undergraduate students numerous marketing competitions over a three-day weekend. The relatively new AMA Annual Conferences caters to marketers from middle market firms.^[6]

History

At a 1915 convention of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World, a group of advertising teachers established the National Association of Teachers of Advertising (NATA). Initial discussions revolved around the definition of advertising and the study of advertising. The group's name changed to National Association of Teachers of Marketing & Advertising (NATMA) and then National Association of Teachers of Marketing (NATM) as its focus expanded to marketing, incorporating educators from a variety of disciplines, including economics and accounting.

Approximately 15 years later a second organization, the American Marketing Society (AMS), was founded dedicated to the science of marketing. Lewis and Owen explained the first president, Paul Nystrom, "expressed a need to find ways of lowering the cost of marketing, a concern for criticisms against marketing, and an interest in finding 'useful tools and devices in marketing practice'".^[7]

The two organizations jointly published the Journal of Marketing in 1936 and merged in 1937 to form the American Marketing Association. The association was housed at the University of Illinois in its early years and eventually moved its headquarters to Chicago as its professional staff expanded. As the study and practice of marketing became more sophisticated and specialized, the AMA also provided new offerings with the launch of the Journal of Marketing Research (1964) and acquisitions of Journal of Public Policy & Marketing (from the University of Michigan in 1990,^[8]) and Journal of International Marketing (from Michigan State University in 1997).

The American Marketing Association has enjoyed a web-based presence since 1994 when a group of faculty initially created an association website. Within a year, they purchased the domain www.ama.org which continues to serve as the organization's website.^[9]

On May 16, 2017, the association announced its 2017 fellows; Ajay Kohli a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, V.Kumar Regents Professor at Georgia State University, Christine Moorman a professor at Duke University and Jr John G. Lynch, Jr. Professor at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder.^[10] Board of Directors for the year 2018-2019 was announced in August 2018.^[11]

Volunteer leadership

Governed by volunteers, the American Marketing Association board of directors has been chaired by a collection of distinguished marketing practitioners and scholars from across the field. Listed below are the AMA Board chairs from 1937 to the present as well as the leaders of the AMA's predecessors.

References

External links

• www.ama.org – AMA website for professional marketers
• www.ama.org/academic – AMA website for marketing scholars
• www.ama.org/publications/JournalOfMarketing/Pages/About.aspx – Journal of Marketing website
• www.ama.org/publications/JournalOfMarketingResearch/Pages/About.aspx – Journal of Marketing Research website