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Since 1984, Erak Clothing, a Turkish contractor, has manufactured jeans as a full-package producer for international brands, such as Calvin Klein, Guess, and Esprit. Following the creation of its own brand, Mavi Jeans, in 1991, the firm has been transforming itself into an original brand-name manufacturer and retailer. Mavi Jeans are now sold worldwide at more than 3,000 sales points, including Nordstrom, Macy's, and Bloomingdale's department stores, and five directly owned and operated flagship stores in Vancouver, New York, Frankfurt, Berlin, and Montreal. In this article, the authors tell the exceptional story of the firm's transformation from a full-package manufacturer into an original brand-name manufacturer and retailer. They discuss how a peripheral manufacturing firm has managed to achieve a high value-added competitive advantage by gaining access to global networks of production, consumption, and information in the clothing industry: a buyer-driven industry in which the world's largest retailers, branded marketers, and manufacturers without factories are the dominant players with asymmetrical influence and power. The case study supports the theoretical position that individual firms have some room for autonomous action and that power relationships have some fragility that can be exploited by firms with strategic intent.

The growth and increasingly mainstream appeal of various aspects of the Internet could have a lasting effect on a firm's marketing mix. The authors address one of the external environmental factors that marketing and brand managers, as well as public policymakers, should continually monitor as the online community further develops: trademark law. As managers attempt to leverage the value of the trademarked brand, the authors examine the impact of the current state of technology and the law to understand the reach of current legal interpretations and the implications for present and future trademark strategy online.

Under the Lanham Act and the Trademark Revision Act of 1988, trademarks may be cancelled if it is ruled that consumers use the brand name to describe a generic category. Trademark cancellation, or \"genericide,\" has high stakes in that it can result in the loss of a valuable corporate asset. The authors provide an overview of the history of trademark cancellation cases and examine what types of evidence are considered in such cases. The authors provide an analysis of trends in recent court rulings and advice for avoiding genericide.

Discusses regulatory status on use of product placement in movies or television programs; analysis of 112 hours of primetime TV programs on four major networks, ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, Apr. 2-8, 1997.

Direct foreign investment in manufacturing abroad has a number of consequences for the firm. One aspect, particularly salient when the company's image is tied to its home country, is the impact of the DFI upon customer perceptions of the brand. The present study shows how changes in perceptions can be assessed prior to the investment decision, and how the brand value consequences of a particular location can be estimated. The proposed method is illustrated using data from a Japanese company's entry into the U.S.

Trademarks such as brand names may be the most important assets of many companies, but their value depends on the ability to protect them from infringement. In this research, two key tests of trademark infringement are examined: likelihood of confusion and genericness. On the basis of a conceptual analysis, the author evaluates several alternative measures of trademark confusion and genericness, including both existing and new techniques. These measures are contrasted in two large-scale field studies with about 1500 consumers. The results indicate that estimates of likelihood of confusion and genericness are highly sensitive to the particular method employed, partly because the underlying states of consumer confusion and genericness are fuzzy and not well defined. The author concludes with a discussion of the research implications for (1) our understanding of consumer trademark confusion and genericness, (2) the measurement of trademark infringement, and (3) the use of survey-based measures in public policy and legal disputes.

Why do some consumers pay a premium for branded products? According to the consumer information theory, brands signal the quality of experience goods (products whose quality cannot be determined on inspection) to consumers for whom personal search and testing is relatively costly. We find that the product and customer mix in a sample of branded and unbranded service stations is generally consistent with the theory. Branded dealers are more likely to carry products for which cheating on quality is an issue and to serve customers for whom personal search and testing is relatively costly.

Last spring, the Federal Communications Commission responded to commercial and public demand for toll-free telephone numbers by adding the 877 prefix to the 800 and 888 service access codes. The release of a third, and future, toll-free prefix threatens to cause a flood of trademark litigation related to toll-free vanity telephone numbers. Telephone numbers are protectable as trademarks and often incorporate a company's trademark or trade name. As a result, vanity numbers often represent significant goodwill investments. The introduction of new service access codes will generate conflicts as holders of 800 vanity numbers, such as 800-GO-BEARS, challenge business competitors that reserve equivalent or similar numbers with different prefixes, such as 888-GO-BEARS or 877-GO-BARES. Likewise, the potential for cyberlaw litigation will increase as organizations create new Internet domain name registries, such as \".store\" or \".firm,\" that will compete with the \".com\" top level domain. This Comment proposes that the FCC expand its first-come, first-served registration policy for toll-free numbers by incorporating policies and proposals from the analogous context of Internet domain names. In addition, the author argues that the FCC should encourage businesses with conflicting toll-free vanity telephone numbers to utilize the Patent and Trademark Office's existing framework for trademark challenges and appeals. By adopting procedural mechanisms and legal rules that accommodate problems specific to the toll-free telephone number industry, the FCC will forestall a surge of trademark litigation involving conflicts between holders of toll-free vanity numbers.

Potential problems with federal trademark law; US. Topics include the Trademark Law Revision Act of 1988 (TMRA) and its intent-to--use system, the Lanham Act, and whether protection should always be nationwide.