Counterfeiting of luxury products: An attitudinal examination

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to understand the consumer perception of Counterfeit Luxury goods across ages and what consumer mentality triggers the consumption of these goods and can be associated to the causality to their rise in popularity.A sample size of 108 respondents was taken from Amritsar, Punjab, India. Upon inspection of the data it was revealed that there are enough correlations among the statements to move ahead with the factor analysis. Anti image matrix contained low correlations which also showed that data was appropriate for factor analysis. KMO measure of sampling adequacy was computed and found to be 0.555 which is a good figure (Hair et.al 2011). The chi square value was significant and Bartlett’s test indicated that corelation matrix is not an identity matrix. Hence, all these factors indicate that data is appropriate for factor analysis. Tools used for the study were IBM SPSS and Microsoft Excel.We can conclude that socioeconomic factors make up the majority of the decision making process with factors such as low income encouraging consumption. Furthermore, there seems to be a strong linking between their appetite for consumption of these goods and their desire for a better social status. Lastly, younger age groups are likely to be more impressionable and have a higher linking to counterfeit goods compare to older age groups.With the help of this study, marketers can devise appropriate strategies to counteract the consumption of counterfeit goods. Awareness should be spread through advertising and promotions to portray consumption of counterfeit goods in an unethical way which can help curb the growth of this market. Collective action by the luxury goods industry is likely to benefit all parties involved and recover sales lost to counterfeit goods. Lastly, as stated by Lewis, 2009, consumers are encouraged to inform the producer or law enforcement of their suspicions of sale of counterfeit goods.