Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the debate about brand marketing that occurred as part of the 1930s consumer movement and continued after the Second World War in academic and regulatory circles.

This paper presents an historical account of the anti-brand marketing movement using a qualitative approach. It examines both primary and secondary historical sources as well as legal statutes, regulatory agency actions, judicial cases and newspaper and trade journal stories.

In response to the rise of brand marketing in the latter 1800s and early 1900s, the USA experienced an anti-brand marketing movement that lasted half a century. The first stage was public as part of the consumer movement but was overshadowed by the product safety and truth-in-advertising concerns. The consumer movement stalled when the USA entered the Second World War, but brand marketing continued to raise questions during the war as the US government attempted to regulate the provisions of goods during the war. After the war, the public accepted brand marketing. Continuing anti-brand marketing criticism was largely confined to academic writings and regulatory activities. Ultimately, many of the stage-two challenges to brand marketing went nowhere, but a few led to regulations that continue today.

This paper is the first to recognize a two-stage anti-brand marketing movement in the USA from 1929 to 1980 that has left a small but significant modern-day regulatory legacy.

The purpose of this article is to examine the US history of advertising regulation, both formal and informal and public and private – particularly focused on advertising that is likely to mislead consumers about attributes, characteristics or performance of advertised products.

This research examines both primary sources such as legal challenges and contemporary writings as well as secondary sources.

Although early court decisions were reluctant to find advertising to be dishonest, the Post Office was the first government agency to challenge blatantly false advertisements through criminal prosecution. At the end of the 1800s, the nascent advertising industry developed an interest in regulating truthfulness to enhance advertising credibility. It proposed a model state criminal code and advertising clubs, followed by local Better Business Bureaus, began to informally resolve advertising dispute. In 1914, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was established with authority to prevent unfair methods of competition which it used to challenge advertising that was likely to injure competitors. This authority was later expanded to cover advertising that was likely to mislead consumers regardless of competitive injury. The FTC experimented with trade association advertising provisions and expanding its concepts and tools overtime until a period of retrenchment in the 1980s that set the foundations of modern advertising regulation.

This is the first treatment of advertising regulatory history that simultaneously covers and compares various sources of advertising regulation to develop a comprehensive exposition of advertising regulation history.

This research seeks to examine the regulation of practices that promote brand interest. Its goal is to develop a comprehensive conceptual framework of such practices.

A comprehensive search of US marketing laws and regulations was conducted to find cases and regulations pertaining to practices that promote consumer interest in a particular brand. These practices were then arranged into categories by their method of influencing consumer behavior.

The 3Cs approach appears to provide a useful conceptual model for consumer brand managers. This model allows managers to consider the applicable case law and regulations for each type of practice.

The conceptual model developed here is the first of its kind. It provides a useful tool for consumer brand managers who are considering various practices to promote brand interest. It helps brand managers evaluate the legal risks of the various practices they are considering.

This paper aims to assert that rather than challenging brand parodies, brand owners should consider allowing them in order to expand brand equity to convey a brand personality that includes a sense of humor.

The article analyzes recent brand product parody lawsuits.

Recent court decisions are more likely to allow product parodies than earlier court decisions.

Rather than expensive litigation that may lead to unfavorable public opinion, brand owners should consider licensing parody products to exercise some control over product quality and parody themes.

The article proposes tactical change for brand owners to further build brand equity.

This research aims to examine a number of legal sources for evidence that US marketers were interested in protecting their brand identities in the 1800s.

The research examines historical legal records including registrations for commercial prints and labels, design patents and trademarks as well as other legal records. The work discusses the evolution of the concept of brand identity by examining various legal methods that were used to try to protect brand identity from imitation.

The research suggests that marketer interest in the development and protection of brand identity preceded the US Civil War and confirms that this interest was led by marketers of patent medicines, tobacco and liquor. However, the study also demonstrates strong interest by marketers of many other types of products from disposable products to durable manufactured items.

Many original records were lost in the 1836 Patent Office fire or have been simply lost. Some of the databases examined are too large to be comprehensively examined.

The examination of legal records from this period of uncertainty shows how the practice of brand identification led to the concept of brand identity: the legal data examined offer a wealth of information for marketing historians.

This paper aims to discuss the early brand protection efforts of Coca‐Cola.

The paper examines the hundreds of trademark infringement challenges brought by Coca‐Cola in courts and before the US Patent and Trademark Office and develops a tripartite system of categorizing these challenges by primary legal issue.

Coca‐Cola developed several innovations in brand identity protection including challenges to a wide variety of similar names, logos and packaging, the use of detectives in service settings and the use of consumer psychological evidence in legal proceedings. Ultimately, it protected it name against those rivals that closely imitated both words in its name or words similar to Coca or Coke. However, it was unable to obtain exclusive rights to the word cola which became the generic designation for such drinks.

Even today, the scope of Coca‐Cola's brand protection efforts provide a useful model for modern brands. This work also presents and summarizes important historical data.

This study examines Coca‐Cola's brand protection efforts and legal challenges in much greater detail than previous historical works on Coca‐Cola.

This article aims to examine the US history of practices that mask the marketing content of messages to consumers and of the public policy approaches taken towards such practices.

This research examines both primary sources such as legal challenges and contemporary writings as well as secondary sources.

The US legal/regulatory system has been examining practices that mask the marketing content of communications for over 125 years. Fully masked messages were initially regulated under postal service laws and publisher self‐regulatory codes. Partially masked messages, e.g. testimonials, were examined first by courts and later by regulatory and industry self‐regulatory agencies. These diverse sources of regulation led to diverse approaches and in part explain the modern preference for information disclosure over prohibiting the masking of marketing messages.

Modern analysis of these practices ignores their history and the historical evolution of their regulation. This article not only reveals a rich regulatory history, but also suggests that modern policy should treat the broad array of masking practices consistently and correct current policy approaches that are based on historical development rather than modern public policy analysis and concerns.

This paper aims to assert that trademark law is too restrictive and that consumers should have some rights to a brand independent of the brand owner.

The paper examines the expansive tendency of trademark law and the concept of trademark fair use and the impact of trademark law on customer relationships.

The concept of trademark fair use offers only limited benefits to brand consumers.

Despite the ability to enforce exclusive ownership rights under trademark law, brand owners need to exert a broad view of customer co‐ownership or they risk less customer involvement with the brand.

The paper proposes policy changes to allow great consumer enjoyment of brands.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the legal concepts and theories that are useful in protecting a brand from harmful and unauthorized social media use by third parties.

Qualitative research of articles, news stories, court decisions and statutes was conducted. Various legal concerns and theories were developed from this information.

The various legal theories were organized into a three‐category framework: Monitoring; 'Mposters; and Message.

This framework should be useful to brand managers to protect their brand against unauthorized use, imitation or unfavourable affiliations in social media.

This work is the first to develop a managerial framework of legal issues to address unauthorized and unfavourable use of a brand identity in social media.