Entering a new product category or new geographic area may mean adding one or more new competitors with names similar to that of the now-extended brand names those competitors have trademarked or can claim by common law as first users. A company extending its brand therefore may be unable to use its own trademark legally unless it can show the brand extension as a natural expansion. Most such lawsuits settle, but this study uses legal research methods to examine 12 that went to trial. Results show a brand extender most often prevailing in court if and only if (1) its extension into a new product category is seen as similar to its current offerings or (2) its geographic expansion is seen as simply moving into an area in which it already has market presence. By contrast, a firm may lose out to a company already using a similar name for a diverse set of reasons: products differing from their current offerings, differing trademarks, weak marks, or if buyers seem unlikely to encounter both users of the name in question. But no bright line divides winners from losers.

Underconfidence among women can reduce their career aspirations and thwart advancement in whatever career they choose. For managers seeking to retain and promote capable women, we recommend addressing the gender gap in confidence to increase the effectiveness of women in the current workforce as employees and leaders and thereby attract the best new hires among women seeking opportunity. Based on a wide range of research and the broad experience of the authors, we discuss useful approaches-include helping women learn how to be more self-confident through classes and webinars-but also discouraging practices such as equating low confidence with low competence. The entire organization can benefit when its practices recognize the need for and payoff from reducing the confidence gap between women and men.

Unlike companies or products, individuals possess intrinsic personal branding as a result of personality qualities, past experience and development, and communication with others-whether they know it or not. In this sense, every person already has a personal brand of some kind. The challenge is to manage that brand strategically. We offer a process for doing so, beginning with self-analysis. Then we review published sources and summarize interviews about the personal brands of 33 U.S. and European sales executives and managers, salesforce members, and professionals who sell their own services. The interviews indicate roughly equal emphasis on competence and personal qualities in creating personal brands, as well as significant interest in distinctiveness, and the respondents provide a range of examples of how personal branding pays off. This investigation leads to our basic recommendation: Follow a strategic self-branding process based on one's values and competencies, similar to the branding methods of companies and products, but with the understanding that personal branding will change as one's career advances.

Financial packages provide the most common incentive to meet the legal requirement that retirement be voluntary. However, managers have other tools to encourage retirement or encourage staying on the job--within legal constraints and consistent with current health insurance changes that may make pre-65 retirement more desirable. In using these tools, managers must consider demographic realities that offer a large cohort available to replace retirees. To assist managers, a qualitative study among human resource experts probed how companies decide between encouraging retirement and encouraging staying on the job and also how each is accomplished to maintain a workforce best matched to job requirements. Suggestions for marketing retirement include starting early to encourage saving so that employees can afford to retire and improving the retirement 'product' by flexible alternatives to full-time work, including self-employment. Suggestions for keeping employees on the job include tailoring schedules and rewards to the preferences and needs of individuals who might otherwise retire.

"Trade dress" is the legal term for a nonfunctional design feature, such as the cowhide pattern on Gateway's computer boxes. Many companies don't know its value or assume that they could sue imitators. Here's a simple experiment to acquire the data needed for protection.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Increasingly, the government agencies that enforce antitrust laws are scrutinizing organizations' marketing, and shifts in practices in the early 2000s have reinvigorated enforcement activity. Understanding what behavior raises antitrust flags is critical for companies with dominant market share in one or more product categories. There has been increasing scrutiny of shelf-slotting practices and category management in the retail sector, for example. Takes managers through the process of determining antitrust violation and lays out five important cases in which practices that seemed to fit with competitive norms or good citizenship, in fact, were ruled to be breaches of antitrust law--in some cases, with momentous penalties. Describes a sampling of the tactics that can help to temper competitiveness with caution. Concludes that it is fundamental for managers to look at their competitive tactics--and at the business strategies and processes that support those tactics--through the eyes of antitrust regulators.