Which firms use trademarks - and why? Representative firm-level evidence from Germany

Dirk Crass

No 14-118, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: Trademarking firms are more productive, generate higher profits, and have a better survival rate. Trademarking firms are in one word more successful, which might motivate non-trademarking firms to adopt a trademark strategy. But this seems not to be the case. The proportion of trademarking firms in the German business sector amounts to just 18%. This figure is quite low, given that nearly each firm has reputation to protect. But why has the vast majority of firms no registered trademarks? Using a representative sample of German firms, the present paper links certain firm characteristics to a firms' propensity to register trademarks. The empirical results point to circumstances under which trademarks are significantly more often used: this is the case where a large distance between a firm and its customers exists, a firm's product quality is difficult to assess, a firm's products are characterized by a limited (but not strong) substitutability, and where a firm is engaged in R&D and introduces innovative products. Trademarks are considerably less frequently used if none of this is the case.

Keywords: Intellectual Property Rights; Trademarks; Reputation; Innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C25 D21 L14 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-com, nep-cse, nep-eur, nep-ind, nep-ino, nep-ipr and nep-pr~
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/106134/1/813202493.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:14118

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().