Seminar - Unbundling the Brand: Differentiation and the Law in the Brazilian South American Tea Industry

You are cordially invited to attend a research seminar by Prof. Teresa Da Silva Lopes,University of York . Follow the link in your calendar email invitations(Join Microsoft Teams Meeting) to join the seminar on Wednesday, 24th March at 13.00.

Abstract:

Existing accounts of the ‘modern brand’, embedded in a range of unique characteristics and a personality, which in the second industrial revolution, evolved from the ‘proto brand’, relying essentially on quality and origin, are too simplistic. This study unbundles the concept of the brand to show that historically there have been a wider array of ways in which brands have been used in business. The coupling between the use of differentiation strategies and the law, implicit in the ‘modern brand’, has not always applied. This study focuses on the Brazilian South American tea industry, which curiously, registered the highest number of trademarks in Brazil in the period 1875-1914, when other goods such as coffee were much more significant in the economy. It is also an industry which was highly internationalised since its beginning, and which over time was challenged by increasing protectionist barriers to entry in other Latin American countries, its main host markets.