Trademarks and Brands in the Evolution of Industries in South America

LLUCH ANDREA

Rotterdam

Congreso; 23rd European Business History Conference; 2019

European Business History Association

Business history scholars? interest in trademark registration and branding practices has increased in recent years. These studies are helping to call longstanding assumptions about branding into question and have shown how complex the interpretation of brands? roles can be. My intention is to investigate the specific features that these historical issues present in certain Latin American countries that are in many ways very dissimilar to one another but share some common features, namely: 1) they were exporters of unbranded products; 2) they had a high share of nonresident trademark registrations; and 3) they were not leading users of international trademark registration systems. To that end, this paper, which is based on a compilation of national trademark data for Colombia and Uruguay during the first global economy, will try to answer how (and by whom) marketing knowledge was introduced into both countries. It will also investigate how firms transformed and created products and the evolution of business activities in general, looking at registrant data by country of origin and sector. This comparative paper aims to illustrate how the concepts and use of brands and trademarks varied across Latin American countries historically, and how these differences impacted the evolution of industries in the region. This research is based on official registration records for Uruguayan and Colombian trademarks as well as a variety of business, legal and journal records, which I draw on to discuss the historical context of trademark registration and the disparate development of a branding culture in South America. My ultimate intention is to create a more diverse, complete picture of the business history of trademarks than currently exists.