Defining and Measuring the “Market for Brands”: Are Emerging Economies Catching up?

Abstract

“Markets for brands” play an important economic role in today's global economy. Trademarks and brands can be purchased, franchised or licensed.The ability to use Markets for Brands allows companies to diversify their business, to access competences, and to generate new revenues. In recent years, firms in developed and emerging economies have been active users of these markets by licensing or acquiring established global brands. Yet, despite their apparent importance, little is known about the size of these markets. This article first defines and provides a taxonomy of different brand markets. Second, it analyzes the economic rationale of such markets. Finally, it provides evidence on their magnitude, also assessing their relative importance of the different brand‐related transaction types in developed and emerging economies alike.

Editorial: why and when do firms trademark? Bridging perspectives from industrial organisation, innovation and entrepreneurship

“…Some mature firms cash in on trademark assets through licencing, so that participation in 'markets for brands' is emerging as an additional motive to file and maintain trademarks (Graham et al 2013;Frey et al 2015). Ferrucci et al (2019) in this issue offer a first in-depth overview of the trademark licencing agreements officially registered at the USPTO (building on data from Graham, Marco, and Myers 2018).…”

All the great things you can do with trademark data: Taking stock and looking ahead

“…It would also be relevant to investigate in which directions trademarks flow in global value chains (Timmer et al, 2014). A claim from the international business literature is that companies from emerging countries often acquire Western companies to exploit their assets (Amendolagine et al, 2018), including their trademarks (Frey et al, 2015; Makino et al, 2002). Large sample evidence to support, nuance, or dismiss this claim is missing, but trademarks could offer the opportunity to analyze this possibility.…”

From a distinctive sign to an exchangeable asset: exploring the U.S. market for trademark licensing

“…Indeed, unlike patents, trademark use is not simply limited to innovative companies facing competitive pressures to build and consolidate their technological leadership (Graham, Marco and Meyers 2018;WIPO 2013). Almost all types of organizations of any size, across all economic sectors, including institutions and governmental and non-governmental bodies, use trademarks to develop, support, promote, and consolidate the recognition and reputational value of their brands 1 in the product and service markets (Castaldi, 2018a;Castaldi 2019b;Graham, Marco and Meyers 2018;Frey, Ansar and Wunsch-Vincent 2015;WIPO 2013).…”

“…Regardless of who manufactures/offers the product/service, what makes the difference is having and exploiting the associated trademarks. Consequently, we are witnessing an increasing number of trademarks being licensed, bought and sold between different entities, both at the national and international level (Frey, Ansar and Wunsch-Vincent 2015), which shows that this sign 1 'Trademark' and 'brand' refer to two different concepts. Even though these terms are sometimes used interchangeably as 'rough synonyms' (Landes and Posner 1987), it is important to make a distinction: 'while a brand is a corporate image that builds over time and is a reputation of quality in the eyes of customers, a trademark is legal protection of the brand, granted by the Trademark and Patent Office' (https://www.upcounsel.com/trademark-vs-brand, accessed on November 2018).…”

“…The findings of this explorative study, albeit limited by the scant availability and incompleteness of the data 6 , reveal at least three contributions to the extant literature. First, they add to the 'Market for Trademarks' literature (Frey, Ansar and Wunsch-Vincent 2015;Graham, Marco and Myers 2018) through a granular description of one relevant portion of this marketthe licensing phenomenonshedding light on its main features from different angles and hence fostering our understanding of its importance. Second, our findings contribute to the 'Marketing and Innovation' literature (De Vries et al 2017;Castaldi 2016;Block et al 2014;Flikkema, De Man and Castaldi 2014) by affording the reader a novel grasp of the practice of trademark trade, which is fast becoming a viable mean for firms both to access a third party's trademark in order to flag their innovation efforts while augmenting the value perception of their offerings (demand side) and to reap new opportunities for 5 We also try to provide stronger evidence than mere descriptive statistics on the role of trademark classes for the licensing process by running two econometric exercises.…”