Brand Trust. Brands have been emblematic of selling organizations since as early as the
thirteenth century when Venetian merchants began applying watermarks to their products
(Colapinto 2011). In fact, many dominant US brands began as family names to reflect the people
behind the product (e.g., Singer began as a family-owned business; Colapinto 2011). The
transition from family name to managed product brand became a primary focus in the early
1900s as companies like Proctor & Gamble began developing targeted brand strategies (Berthon
et al. 1999). Thus brands began as representations of firms but have transitioned to have multiple
associations (John et al. 2006), which marketing researchers have sought to understand for the
better part of a century (Aggarwal and McGill 2012; Erdem and Swait 2004; Erdem et al. 2006;
Fournier 1998; McDermott 1936; Nixon 1936). Table 2 lists representative research on brand
trust.