Consumers' attitude and purchase intention towards counterfeit of luxury brands

Abstract

Counterfeiting has been a problem for all original brand manufacturers and has broadened its scope and magnitude with a great speed in emerging economies. Many tactics used by original brands to negate counterfeiting generated mixed results and hence these brands have realised the importance of giving attention to the demand side of counterfeit markets. Thus, this study is aimed to identify the consumer identities or profiles based on attitude towards purchasing counterfeit of luxury brands and investigate their purchase intention for counterfeits. For this, 189 respondents who are above 18 assuming decision making abilities were recruited through judgmental sampling. Thus, data were collected via a mall intercept survey at major shopping centres in Ahmedabad city, Gujarat with the help of non-disguised, self-administered questionnaire. The unit of analysis was the shopping mall of Ahmedabad city. Cluster analysis was performed on attitudinal variables resulting into formation of two identities – original brand seekers and counterfeiters. These formed groups with varied purchase intentions were assessed through MANOVA. By understanding and addressing counterfeit purchasing behaviours rightly and their users’ exact nature of profile can help practitioners to discourage such behaviours and provide a blueprint for planning better counter-attack strategies.