Firm Growth through Product Offerings
with Leo Liu and Wing Wah Tham.
Abstr act: We use textual analysis of high-dimensional data from USPTO t rademark documents to develop novel measures of product offerings for publi c and private firms across all industries from 1926-2020. We classify produ cts, both goods and services, into three categories: 1) business stealing, 2) quality improving, and 3) new variety products and measure the economic value of each product. The USPTO’s stringent requirements of 1) evidence th rough a specimen and detailed description on how the mark is used in commer ce; and 2) the date of first use of the mark in commerce for trademark appl ications, maintenance, and renewal, allow us to accurately track firms’ evo lving product portfolios. Our measures capture the evolution of product wav es over the last half century and the emergence of breakthrough (new variet y) products. Stock market reactions around the products’ first-use-in-comme rce align with future product sales. Firms introduce fewer new variety prod ucts, yet these offerings contribute significantly to firm growth. Firms fo cusing on business stealing grow through acquisitions, whereas firms make m ore R&D investments to fuel new variety creation.
DTSTAMP:20260507T143735Z DTSTART:20240926T163000Z DTEND:20240926T180000Z SEQUENCE:0 TRANSP:OPAQUE END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR