CFP: “Brand and Its History”

Patricio Saiz and Rafael Castro are organizing a session on the history of branding for the next meeting of the Spanish Economic HistoryAssociation (Asociación Española de Historia Económica—AEHA), which will be held at the Colegio Universitario de Estudios Financieros (CUNEF)‐Madrid, September 11-12, 2014. Their call for papers for a session titled "Brand and Its History: Economic, Business and Social Value" follows:

Currently, brands play a significant role in developed societies. A thorough analysis of the impact of trademarks and branding on citizens, firms and economy requires taking into account a historical approach. Brand value has been analyzed from different scientific perspectives such as those from marketing, accounting, and economic or social studies. Notwithstanding, there are key and significant issues still not addressed or poorly analyzed. From the seminal work of Wilkins (1992) focusing on the role of trademarking in the evolution of large corporations and claiming for new brand studies, only very few works have come up, generally focused on certain trademarks, in certain firms or in some sectors. It is only recently that scholars have begun to systematically disentangle the economic and entrepreneurial history of trademarking see, for instance, the special issue related in Business History Review 86, 2, 2012).
    This session, related to the competitive and multidisciplinary research project UAM-CEMU-2012-034, is devoted to the hypothesis that the brand is an intangible asset with complex network effects. Thus, brand and trademark studies require multidimensional approaches, which include an unavoidable historical perspective. The main session objectives would be, among others:

• Building historical databases for the understanding of enduring brands and the processes of trademark management and value accumulation.
• Developing models to evaluate the historical contribution of the trademark value on economic growth.
• Assessing brand equity and analyzing the economic impact of the time of the trademark market entry.
• Reflecting on the main sociological items related to the historical development of brand communities.

Interested scholars should send a brief (150-word) abstract to the session organizers, rafael.castro@uam.es and and patricio.saiz@uam.es, no later than January 30, 2013.