MGT103 Final
What are some advantages and disadvantages of secondary data?
Advantages of secondary data are the time savings, the low cost, and the greater level of detail that may be available. Disadvantages of secondary data are that the data may be out of date, unspecific, or have definitions, categories, or age groupings that are wrong for the project.
Describe four generational cohorts.
Answer: (1) Baby boomers are the generation of 76 million children born between 1946 and 1964. These Americans are growing older and will all be 65 or older by 2030. (2) Generation X includes the 55 million people born between 1965 and 1980. These well-educated Americans, also known as the baby bust cohort because of declining birthrates during that time, are supportive of racial and ethnic diver- sity. (3) Generation Y, or millennials, are the 62 million Americans among the U.S. population born between 1981 and 1996. Based on immigration and death rate estimates, millennials are currently the largest generation, with 75 million people. (4) The post-millennial generation, which includes consumers born between 1997 and 2010, is referred to as Generation Z.
How does technology impact customer value?
Answer: (1) Because the cost of technology is plummeting, this allows consumers to assess the value of technology-based products on other dimensions, such as quality, service, and relationships. (2) Technology provides value through the development of new products. (3) Technology has changed the way existing products are produced through recycling and precycling. (4) Technology enables the collection of data used in the growing field of data analytics.
5-5 What three attitude-change approaches are most common?
Answer: (1) Change beliefs about the extent to which a brand has certain attributes. (2) Change the perceived importance of these at- tributes. (3) Add new attributes to the product.
What are four possible reasons for the present state of ethical conduct in the United States?
Answer: (1) Increased pressure on businesspeople to make decisions in a society with diverse value systems. (2) A growing tendency for business decisions to be judged publicly by groups with different val- ues and interests. (3) The public's expectations of ethical business behavior have increased. (4) Ethical business conduct may have actu- ally declined.
6-2 What are the three main types of organizational buyers?
Answer: (1) Industrial firms, which in some way reprocess a productor service they buy before selling it again to the next buyer; (2) resell- 6-5 ers, which are wholesalers and retailers that buy physical product sand resell them again without any reprocessing; and (3) government units, which are the federal, state, and local agencies that buy products and services for the constituents they serve.
What are the three types of buying situations or buy classes?
Answer: (1) New buy—the organization is a first-time buyer of the product or service; (2) straight rebuy—the organization reorders an existing product or service from a list of acceptable suppliers; and (3) modified rebuy—an organization's buying center changes the product's specifications, price, delivery schedule, or supplier
What are the two primary forms of personal influence?
Answer: (1) Opinion leadership—persons considered to be knowledgeable about or users of particular products and services and (2) word of mouth—the influencing of people (friends, family, and colleagues) during conversations.
What two challenges must marketers overcome when marketing to Hispanic consumers?
Answer: (1) The diversity of nationalities among this subculture that affect product preferences and (2) the language barrier that can lead to misinterpretation or mistranslation of commercial messages when translated into Spanish.
In the marketing research for Tony's Pizza, what is an example of (a) a finding and (b) a marketing action?
Answer: (a) Figure 8-7A depicts annual sales from 2016 to 2019; the finding is that annual sales are relatively flat, rising only 5 million units over the four-year period. (b) Figure 8-7D shows a finding (the decline in pizza consumption) that leads to a recommendation to develop an ad targeting children 6 to 12 years old (the marketing action
What is the difference between a for-profit and a nonprofit organization?
Answer: A for-profit organization is a privately owned organization that serves its customers to earn a profit so that it can survive. A nonprofit organization is a nongovernmental organization that serves its customers but does not have profit as an organizational goal. In- stead, its goals may be operational efficiency or client satisfaction.
11-2 How do high-learning and low-learning products differ?
Answer: A high-learning product requires significant customer education and there is an extended introductory period. A low-learning product requires little customer education because the benefits of purchase are readily understood, resulting in immediate sales.
What is the difference between a marketing dashboard and a marketing metric?
Answer: A marketing dashboard is the visual display of the essential information related to achieving a marketing objective. Each variable displayed in a marketing dashboard is a marketing metric, which is a measure of the quantitative value or trend of a marketing action or result.
What is the meaning of an organization's mission?
Answer: A mission is a clear, concise, meaningful, inspirational, and long-term statement of the organization's function in society, often identifying its customers, markets, products, and technologies. It is often used interchangeably with vision.
10-2 What is the difference between a product line and a product mix?
Answer: A product line is a group of product or service items that are closely related because they satisfy a class of needs, are used together, are sold to the same customer group, are distributed through the same outlets, or fall within a given price range. The product mix consists of all the product lines offered by an organization.
11-4 How does a product manager manage a product's life cycle?
Answer: A product manager shepherds a product through its life cycle by (1) modifying the product, which involves altering one or more of its characteristics to increase its value to customers and thus increase sales; (2) modifying the market, which involves finding new customers, increasing a product's use among existing customers, or creating new use situations; and (3) repositioning the product, which involves changing the place it occupies in consumers' minds relative to competitive products.
What is a social audit
Answer: A social audit is a systematic assessment of a firm's objectives, strategies, and performance in terms of social responsibility. It consists of five steps: (1) Recognition of a firm's social expectations and the rationale for engaging in social responsibility endeavors. (2) Identification of social responsibility causes or programs consistent with the company's mission. (3) Determination of organizational objectives and priorities for programs and activities it will undertake. (4) Specification of the type and amount of resources necessary to achieve social responsibility objectives. (5) Evaluation of social responsibility programs and activities undertaken and assessment of future involvement.
What are the two key characteristics of the marketing concept
Answer: An organization should (1) strive to satisfy the needs of consumers while also (2) trying to achieve the organization's goals
What is the difference between an organization's business and its goals?
Answer: An organization's business describes the clear, broad, underlying industry or market sector of an organization's offering. An organization's goals (or objectives) are statements of an accomplishment of a task to be achieved, often by a specific time. Goals convert an organization's mission and business into long- and short-term performance targets to measure how well it is doing.
What is business portfolio analysis?
Answer: Business portfolio analysis is a technique that managers use to quantify performance measures and growth targets to analyze their firms' SBUs as though they were a collection of separate investments. The purpose of this tool is to determine which SBU or offering generates cash and which one requires cash to fund the organization's growth opportunities.
What country is the biggest as measured by world trade?
Answer: China
What is the commercialization of a new product?
Answer: Commercialization, the most expensive stage for most new products, is the last stage of the new-product development process. It involves positioning and launching a new product in full-scale production and sales.
What are constraints, as they apply to developing a research plan?
Answer: Constraints in a decision are the restrictions placed on potential solutions to a problem, such as time and money. These set the parameters for the research plan—due dates, budget, and so on.
What does "creating a new use situation" mean in managing a product's life cycle?
Answer: Creating a new use situation means finding new uses or applications for an existing product.
8-8 What is cross tabulation?
Answer: Cross tabulation, or cross tab, is a method of presenting and analyzing data involving two or more variables to discover relationships in the data. As the most widely used technique for organizing and presenting marketing data, the simple format and flexibility of cross tabulations permit the direct interpretation of and an easy means to communicate the data.
What is the difference between the demographic and behavioral bases of market segmentation?
Answer: Demographic segmentation is based on some objective physical (gender, race), measurable (age, income), or other classification attribute (birth era, occupation) of prospective customers. Behavioral segmentation is based on some observable actions or attitudes by prospective customers—such as where they buy, what benefits they seek, how frequently they buy, and why they buy
How does the development stage of the new-product development process involve testing the product inside and outside the firm?
Answer: Development is the stage of the new-product process that turns the idea on paper into a prototype—a demonstrable, producible product that can be efficiently manufactured. Internally, laboratory tests are done to see if the product achieves the physical, quality, and safety standards set for it. Externally, market testing is done to expose actual products to prospective consumers under realistic pur- chase conditions to see if they will buy.
What is dumping?
Answer: Dumping is when a firm sells a product in a foreign country below its domestic price or below its actual cost to produce.
What are e-marketplaces?
Answer: E-marketplaces are online trading communities that bring together buyers and supplier organizations to make possible the real- time exchange of information, money, products, and services
What factor is estimated or measured for each of the cells in a market- product grid?
Answer: Each cell in the grid shows the estimated market size of a given product sold to a specific market segment.
Economic espionage includes what kinds of activities?
Answer: Economic espionage is the illegal and unethical clandestine collection of trade secrets or proprietary information about a company's competitors. This practice includes trespassing, theft, fraud, misrepresentation, electronic hacking, searching of competitors' trash, and violations of written and implicit employment agreements with noncompete clauses.
What are environmental forces?
Answer: Environmental forces are the uncontrollable forces that affect a marketing decision. They consist of social, economic, technological, competitive, and regulatory forces.
What are ethics?
Answer: Ethics are the moral principles and values that govern the actions and decisions of an individual or group. They serve as guide- lines on how to act rightly and justly when faced with moral dilemmas.
How do internal and external screening and evaluation approaches differ?
Answer: In internal screening, company employees evaluate the technical feasibility of new-product ideas to determine whether they meet the objectives defined in the new-product strategy development stage. For services, employees are assessed to determine whether they have the commitment and skills to meet customer expectations and sustain customer loyalty. In external screening, evaluation consists of preliminary concept testing of the new-product idea (not the actual product itself) using written descriptions, sketches, mockups, or promotional literature with consumers.
What does lifestyle mean?
Answer: Lifestyle is a mode of living that is identified by how people spend their time and resources, what they consider important in their environment, and what they think of themselves and the world around them.
10-7 What are the main sources of new-product ideas?
Answer: Many firms obtain ideas externally using open innovation, in which an organization finds and executes creative new-product ideas by developing strategic relationships with outside individuals and organizations. Some of these sources include employee and co-worker suggestions; customer and supplier suggestions (either directly, through the firm's salesforce or purchasing department or through crowdsourcing—soliciting ideas via the Internet from large numbers of people); R&D laboratories (both internal to the firm and professional innovation firms such as IDEO); competitive products (analyzing their points of difference that lead to a competitive advantage for them); and smaller, nontraditional technology firms, university technology transfer centers that partner with business firms to commercialize faculty inventions, and lone inventors or entrepreneurs.
What is marketing?
Answer: Marketing is the activity for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that benefit customers, the organization, its stakeholders, and society at large.
What is marketing research?
Answer: Marketing research is the process of defining a marketing problem and opportunity, systematically collecting and analyzing information, and recommending actions to reduce the risk of and thereby improve marketing decisions.
How are marketing and product synergies different in a market-product grid?
Answer: Marketing synergies run horizontally across a market-product grid. Each row represents an opportunity for efficiency in the marketing efforts to a market segment. Product synergies run vertically down the market-product grid. Each column represents an opportunity for efficiency in research and development (R&D) and production. Marketing synergies often come at the expense of product synergies because a single customer segment will likely require a variety of products, each of which will have to be designed and manufactured. The company saves money on marketing but spends more on production. Conversely, if product synergies are emphasized, marketing will have to address the concerns of a wide variety of consumers, which costs more time and money.
What is meant by moral idealism?
Answer: Moral idealism is a personal moral philosophy that considers certain individual rights or duties as universal, regardless of the outcome; it is the philosophy embodied in the Consumer Bill of Rights and favored by consumer interest groups.
What is the five-step marketing research approach?
Answer: The five-step marketing research approach provides a systematic checklist for making marketing decisions and actions. The five steps are: (1) define the problem; (2) develop the research plan; (3) collect relevant information (data); (4) develop findings; and (5) take marketing actions.
What is the difference between a multidomestic marketing strategy and a global marketing strategy?
Answer: Multinational firms view the world as consisting of unique markets. As a result, they use a multidomestic marketing strategy be- cause they have as many different product variations, brand names, and advertising programs as countries in which they do business. Transnational firms view the world as one market. As a result, they use a global marketing strategy, which involves standardizing market- ing activities when there are cultural similarities and adapting them when cultures differ.
What is the new-product strategy development stage in the new-product development process?
Answer: New-product strategy development is the first stage of the new-product process that defines the role for a new product in terms of the firm's overall objectives. During this stage, the firm uses both a SWOT analysis and environmental scanning to assess its strengths and weaknesses relative to the trends it identifies as opportunities or threats. The outcome not only defines the vital "protocol" for each new-product idea but also identifies the strategic role it might serve in the firm's business portfolio.
The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement replaced what trade agreement?
Answer: North American Free Trade Agreement
What is the difference between observational data and questionnaire data?
Answer: Observational data are facts and figures obtained by watching, either mechanically or in person, how people actually behave. Questionnaire data are facts and figures obtained by asking people about their attitudes, awareness, intentions, and behaviors.
Why do marketers use perceptual maps in product positioning decisions?
Answer: Perceptual maps are a means of displaying in two dimensions the location of products or brands in the minds of consumers. Marketers use perceptual maps to see how consumers perceive competing products or brands as well as their own product or brand. Then they can develop marketing actions to move their product or brand to the ideal position.
What are points of difference and why are they important?
Answer: Points of difference are those characteristics of a product that make it superior to competitive substitutes—offerings the organization faces in the marketplace. They are important factors in the success or failure of a new product.
What are some criteria used to decide which segments to choose for targets?
Answer: Possible criteria include market size, expected growth, competitive position, cost of reaching the segment, and compatibility with the organization's objectives and resources.
What is the difference between product positioning and product repositioning?
Answer: Product positioning refers to the place a product occupies in consumers' minds based on important attributes relative to competitive products. Product repositioning involves changing the place a product occupies in a consumer's mind relative to competitive products.
Products may be sold globally in three ways. What are they?
Answer: Products can be sold: (1) in the same form as in their home market (product extension); (2) with some adaptations (product adaptation); and (3) as totally new products (product invention).
7-3 What is protectionism?
Answer: Protectionism is the practice of shielding one or more indus- tries within a country's economy from foreign competition through the use of tariffs or quotas.
The _____Act was punitive toward monopolies, whereas the ______Act was preventive.
Answer: Sherman Antitrust, Clayton
What is meant by social responsibility?
Answer: Social responsibility means that organizations are part of a larger society and are accountable to that society for their actions. It comprises three concepts: (1) profit responsibility—maximizing profits for the organization's owners or shareholders; (2) stakeholder responsibility—focusing on the obligations of the organization to those who can affect the achievement of its objectives; and (3) societal responsibility—focusing on the obligations of the organization to the preservation of the ecological environment and to the general public.
10-10 What is a test market, and what are the three kinds?
Answer: Test marketing involves offering a product for sale on a limited basis in a defined area for a specific time period. The three main kinds of test markets are: (1) standard, (2) controlled, and (3) simulated. In a standard test market, a city (or cities) is selected that is viewed as being demographically representative of the markets targeted for the new product. Standard test markets must have both cable TV systems that can deliver different ads to different homes and retailers with checkout counter scanners to measure sales results. In a controlled test market, the firm contracts the entire test program to an outside service, which pays retailers for shelf space to guarantee a specified percentage of the test product's potential distribution volume. In a simulated (or laboratory) test market (STM), the firm attempts to replicate a full-scale test market by creating a fictitious storefront in a shopping mall and exposing prospective customers to the product (or concept) and ads from both it and its competitors to see if they will buy.
How does the Better Business Bureau encourage companies to follow its standards for commerce?
Answer: The Better Business Bureau (BBB) uses moral suasion to get members to comply with its standards. Companies, which join the BBB voluntarily, must agree to follow these standards before they are allowed to display the BBB Accredited Business logo.
What rights are included in the Consumer Bill of Rights?
Answer: The Consumer Bill of Rights (1962) codified the ethics of exchange between buyers and sellers. These are the rights to safety, to be informed, to choose, and to be heard.
What marketing metric might you use to assess the effectiveness of a new-product program?
Answer: The New Product Development Index, which shows the per- centage of total company sales that come from new products each year
What are the five categories of product adopters in the diffusion of innovations?
Answer: The five categories of product adopters based on the diffusion of innovation are: (1) innovators—2.5 percent; (2) early adopters—13.5 percent; (3) early majority—34 percent; (4) late majority—34 percent; and (5) laggards—16 percent.
What four factors are needed for marketing to occur?
Answer: The four factors are: (1) two or more parties (individuals or organizations) with unsatisfied needs; (2) a desire and ability on their part to have their needs satisfied; (3) a way for the parties to communicate; and (4) something to exchange
Explain the four market-product strategies in diversification analysis
Answer: The four market-product strategies in diversification analysis are: (1) Market penetration, which is a marketing strategy to increase sales of current products in current markets. There is no change in either the basic product line or the markets served. Rather, selling more of the product or selling the product at a higher price generates increased sales. (2) Market development, which is a marketing strategy to sell current products to new markets. (3) Product development, which is a marketing strategy of selling new products to current markets. (4) Diversification, which is a marketing strategy of developing new products and selling them in new markets. This is a potentially high-risk strategy because the firm has neither previous production nor marketing experience on which to draw in marketing a new product to a new market.
What are examples of a functional level in an organization?
Answer: The functional level in an organization is where groups of specialists from the marketing, finance, manufacturing/operations, accounting, information systems, research and development, and/or human resources departments focus on a specific strategic direction to create value for the organization.
Market segmentation involves aggregating prospective buyers into groups that have two key characteristics. What are they?
Answer: The groups should (1) have common needs and (2) respond similarly to a marketing action.
2-10 What is the implementation phase of the strategic marketing process?
Answer: The implementation phase carries out the marketing plan that emerges from the planning phase and consists of (1) obtaining resources; (2) designing the marketing organization; (3) defining precise tasks, responsibilities, and deadlines; and (4) executing the marketing program designed in the planning phase.
Why can an "insignificant point of difference" lead to new-product failure?
Answer: The new product must have superior characteristics that deliver unique benefits to the user; compared to competitors, its benefits must be sufficient enough to motivate a change in consumption behavior. Without these points of difference, the product will probably fail.
7-2 What is the trade feedback effect?
Answer: The phenomenon in which one country's imports affect the exports of other countries and vice versa, thus stimulating trade among countries.
How do the goals set for a marketing program in the planning phase relate to the evaluation phase of the strategic marketing process?
Answer: The planning phase goals or objectives are used as the benchmarks with which the actual performance results are compared in the evaluation phase to identify deviations from the written market- ing plans and to act on those deviations—exploiting positive ones and correcting negative ones.
9-2 In terms of market segments and products, what are the three market
Answer: The three market segmentation strategies are: (1) one product and multiple market segments; (2) multiple products and multiple market segments; and (3) "segments of one," or mass customization—the next step beyond build-to-order.
What are the three steps of the planning phase of the strategic marketing process?
Answer: The three steps of the planning phase of the strategic marketing process are: (1) Conducting a situation analysis, which involves taking stock of where the firm or product has been recently, where it is now, and where it is headed in terms of the organization's marketing plans and the external forces and trends affecting it. To do this, an organization uses a SWOT analysis, an acronym that describes an organization's appraisal of its internal Strengths and Weaknesses and its external Opportunities and Threats. (2) Developing a market-product focus and customer value proposition, which determine what products an organization will offer to which customers. This is often based on market segmentation—aggregating prospective buyers into groups or segments that have common needs and will respond similarly to a marketing action---and crafting a customer value proposition. (3) Designing a marketing program, which is where an organization develops the marketing mix elements and budget for each offering.
In evaluating marketing actions, what are the two dimensions on which they should be evaluated?
Answer: There are two aspects marketers use to evaluate the results of marketing actions: (1) evaluate the decision itself, which involves monitoring the marketplace to determine if action is necessary in the future, and (2) evaluate the decision process used to determine (a) whether the marketing research and analysis used to develop the recommendations were effective or flawed in some way and (b) whether the process could be improved for similar situations in the future.
10-1 What are the four main types of consumer products?
Answer: They are: (1) convenience products—items that the consumer purchases frequently, conveniently, and with a minimum of shopping effort; (2) shopping products—items for which the consumer compares several alternatives on criteria such as price, quality, or style; (3) specialty products—items that the consumer makes a special effort to search out and buy; and (4) unsought products—items that the consumer does not know about or knows about but does not initially want.
8-11 What are the three kinds of sales forecasting techniques?
Answer: They are: (1) judgments of the decision maker who acts on the results of a sales forecast; (2) surveys of knowledgeable groups, those who are likely to know something about future sales; and (3) statistical methods such as trend extrapolation, which involves extending a pattern observed in past data into the future.
Marketers are concerned with which types of reference groups?
Answer: Three reference groups have clear marketing implications: (1) associative groups—ones to which a person actually belongs, such as a brand community that consists of a specialized group of consumers with a structured set of relationships involving a particular brand; (2) aspiration groups—ones that people wish to be a member of or identified with; and (3) dissociative groups—ones that people wish to maintain a distance from because of differences in values or behaviors.
8-12 How do you make a lost-horse forecast?
Answer: To make a lost-horse forecast, begin with the last known value of the item being forecast, list the factors that could affect the forecast, assess whether they have a positive or negative impact, and then make the final forecast.
Explain the difference between trading up and trading down in product repositioning.
Answer: Trading up involves adding value to the product (or line) through additional features or higher-quality materials. Trading down involves reducing the number of features, quality, or price or downsizing—reducing the content of packages without changing package size and maintaining or increasing the package price.
What is the difference between ultimate consumers and organizational buyers?
Answer: Ultimate consumers are the people who use the products and services purchased for a household. Organizational buyers are those manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, and government agencies that buy products and services for their own use or for resale.
7-9 How does licensing differ from a joint venture?
Answer: Under licensing, a company offers the right to a trademark, patent, trade secret, or other similarly valued item of intellectual property in return for a fee or royalty. In a joint venture, a foreign company and a local firm invest together to create a local business to produce some product or service. The two companies share ownership, control, and profits of the new entity.
5-3 What is the term for postpurchase anxiety?
Answer: cognitive dissonance
5-4 The problem with the Toro Snow Pup was an example of selective
Answer: comprehension—consumers perceived the name to mean that Snow Pup was a toy that was too light to do any serious snow removal.
The brands a consumer considers buying out of the set of brands in a product class of which the consumer is aware are collectively called the_______________.
Answer: consideration set
10-3 What kind of innovation would an improved electric toothbrush be?
Answer: continuous innovation—no new learning is required by consumers
Marketing focuses on __________ and __________ consumer needs.
Answer: discovering; satisfying
Marketing efforts to produce, promote, and reclaim environmentally sensitive products are called _____.
Answer: green marketing
The process of segmenting and targeting markets is a bridge between which two marketing activities?
Answer: identifying market needs and executing the marketing program
What mode of entry could a company follow if it has no previous experience in global marketing?
Answer: indirect exporting through intermediaries
Advertising plays a major role in the _______stage of the product life cycle, and ______ plays a major role in the maturity stage.
Answer: introductory; product differentiation
In pure competition there are a_____ number of sellers.
Answer: large
When foreign currencies can buy more U.S. dollars, are U.S. products more or less expensive for a foreign consumer?
Answer: less expensive
Which type of survey provides the greatest flexibility for asking probing questions: mail, telephone, or personal interview
Answer: personal interview (or individual/depth interview)
What is the first stage in the consumer purchase decision process?
Answer: problem recognition—perceiving a need
What are the four marketing mix elements that make up the organiza- tion's marketing program?
Answer: product, price, promotion, place
What one department is almost always represented by a person in the buying center?
Answer: purchasing department
Cross-cultural analysis involves the study of ______.
Answer: similarities and differences among consumers in two or more nations or societies.
An organization can't satisfy the needs of all consumers, so it must focus on one or more subgroups, which are its ___________.
Answer: target market(s)
Organizational buyers are _______.
Answer: those manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, service companies, not-for-profit organizations, and government agencies that buy products and services for their own use or for resale.
In general, which type of online auction creates upward pressure on bid prices and which type creates downward pressure on bid prices?
Answer: traditional auction; reverse auction
What is the difference between a consumer's disposable and discretionary income?
Disposable income is the money a consumer has left after paying taxes to use for necessities such as food, housing, clothing, and transportation. Discretionary income is the money that remains after paying for taxes and necessities and is usually spent on luxury items.
How are important values such as sustainability reflected in the marketplace today
Many Americans desire and practice sustainability to preserve the environment. Specifically, these consumers buy products such as hybrid gas-electric cars. Consumers also prefer brands that have a strong link to social action (like Ben & Jerry's—see Chapter 2). Companies are responding to this consumer trend by producing products that use renewable energy and less packaging
Why are many companies developing multicultural marketing programs?
Multicultural marketing programs consist of combinations of the marketing mix that reflect the unique attitudes, ancestry, communication preferences, and lifestyles of different races and ethnic groups. The reason for developing these programs is that the racial and ethnic diversity of the United States is changing rapidly due to the increases in the African American, Asian, and Hispanic populations, which increases their economic impact.
What is the difference between secondary and primary data?
Secondary data are facts and figures that have already been recorded prior to the project at hand, whereas primary data are facts and figures that are newly collected for the project.
Describe some of the recent changes in trademark law.
Trademarks are intended to protect both the firm selling a trademarked product and the consumer buying it. The Lanham Act (1946) provides for the registration of a company's trademarks. The Trademark Law Revision Act (1988), which modified the LanhamAct, allows companies to secure rights to a name before its actual use by declaring an intent to use the name. In 2003, the United States agreed to participate in the Madrid Protocol, which is a treaty that facilitates the protection of U.S. trademark rights. Also, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that a company may obtain trademarks for colors associated with its products. Finally, the Federal Dilution Act (1995, 2006) prevents someone from using a trademark on a noncompeting product (such as the "Cadillac" of brushes). The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office also recently began issuing trademarks for social media hashtags.