Product Imitation Research Articles

An investigation of Innovation Imitation Products and Consumer Purchases Situational Attribute

Why do the bogus cell phones with low abilities can grab small space in the emerging handset market? This study, through in-depth-interview, secondary data, aims to discuss and explore what the purchase's factors are, as well as acceptance and refusing on the bogus cell phones from consumers. Whether the brand image impacts the bogus cell phones or not? The findings has discovered: (1) the purchased desire is to choose from the price, brand image, its appearance design, the function characteristic, as well as the advertisement of the bogus cell phones; (2) consumer who purchases a bogus cell phone is influenced by the crowd's manner and one's behavior; (3) consumer is willing to buy the bogus cell phones with logo; (4) consumers purchase the bogus cell phone without negative news influence; (5) consumers thought that the impostor cell phones not only meet their needs but also make itself become popular; (6) consumers who purchase the bogus cell phones has low moral faith; therefore, they have no comments regarding infringement wisdom property rights; (7) consumers who use the bogus cell phones are the low end consumers.

Creativity and Imitation: Effects of Regulatory Focus and Creative Exemplar Quality

In creative settings, exposure to creative exemplar products may invite imitation and as such influence creative performance. In understanding creativity, it, therefore, is important to be able to predict imitation of creative exemplar products. Regulatory focus theory can do so, and leads to predictions that deviate from the existing body of knowledge concerning regulatory focus and creativity in the absence of exemplar products. In this study, we proposed that high creative exemplar quality elicits more imitation—and thus lowered creativity—for promotion-focused individuals, whereas creative exemplar quality does not affect the creative process for prevention-focused individuals. To enable a relatively objective measurement of creativity and imitation, these predictions were tested in a laboratory experiment. Results supported predictions, indicating that knowledge about how strongly people engage in imitation in the face of a creative exemplar product leads to more adequate predictions how creative people really are.

Surface and Interface Analysis in Cultural Heritage

Surface and Interface Analysis in Cultural Heritage

Pre‐purchase alternative evaluation: prestige and imitation fashion products

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to understand the pre‐purchase alternative evaluation for prestige and imitation fashion products. The Engel et al. pre‐purchase alternative evaluation process served as the basis for the model.Design/methodology/approachA convenience sample of 158 undergraduate female students completed surveys. The final questionnaire consisted of four scales that measured shopping motivation, reference group influence, perceived product risk, and perceived transaction risk.FindingsWhen compared with the imitation product, consumers' pre‐purchase evaluation of the prestige fashion product was characterized by higher shopping motivation, higher reference group influence, and lower perceived product and transaction risks. When compared with the prestige product, consumers' pre‐purchase evaluation of the imitation fashion product was characterized by lower shopping motivation, lower reference group influence, and higher perceived product and transaction risks. However, not all variables were significant predictors for both the prestige and imitation fashion product.Research limitations/implicationsSince college students were used, results cannot be generalized to the entire population. Further, respondents' answers were self‐reported, and may not represent actual behaviour. Suggestions for future research include additional studies to determine the validity of the model, and replication of the study using different populations.Originality/valueNo studies have examined the pre‐purchase alternative evaluation process for prestige and imitation products. Most research has focused on counterfeit fashion products. Findings from this study can be used by educators, manufacturers, and retailers to help understand, and explain consumer preferences, and pre‐purchase alternative evaluations of fashion products.

Managing Knowledge Distribution to Prevent Product Imitation and Counterfeiting

Product piracy poses an existential threat to many companies. Juristic property rights, which are currently dominantly discussed, do not suffice to combat this threat. The rise in cases of piracy and increasing professionalism of the counterfeiter, give ground for effective prevention methods. Based on gaps of existing approaches, the authors evaluate how knowledge modeling could design preventive measures. They develop a new approach which makes information and knowledge leaks transparent, analyzable, and controllable. The approach is based on interactions and transfers of information and knowledge between departments of a company with internal and external business partners. For this purpose, a modeling process for knowledge-intensive business interactions is used and modified. Choosing dynamic assessment questions establishes the level of risk of information and knowledge on piracy and prioritizes company specific measures. In addition, the procedure reappraises companies’ existing modes of prevention. Based on this analysis, the method helps to develop and rank measures to hinder the theft of information by pirates. The approach fills the gap in known concepts of protection, which are used only after a case of piracy has taken place. The approach also adds a new perspective in knowledge management.

Innovation and Creativity in Festival Organizations

This study contributes to understanding processes of innovation and creativity in festival organizations. The focus is on the internal work of renewing the festival. Three case studies of Swedish festival organizations demonstrate how festival workers attempt to renew the festival product. Processes of renewal include various ways of encouraging new ideas and creative solutions, such as brainstorming, imitation of similar products, and influences from the external environment. Two main processes of renewal were identified: institutionalized and emergent. The study further elaborated on the emergent process of renewal, thus identifying incremental and improvised renewal. Different factors contributing to or hindering innovations were distinguished; the demands of potential visitors, the management's view on renewal, the team's view on renewal, the organizational culture, and change of managers and staff.

When ‘national innovation system’ meet ‘varieties of capitalism’ arguments on labour qualifications: On the skill types and scientific knowledge needed for radical and incremental product innovations

The literatures on ‘varieties of capitalism’ (VoC) and ‘national innovation systems’ (NIS) propose very similar arguments about how firms require different types of labour qualifications to pursue strategies of radical product innovation (RPI), incremental product innovation (IPI), and product imitation (PI) respectively. Despite their similar lines of reasoning, however, the VoC scholars are concerned with the skill profiles of a firm's entire workforce, whereas the NIS proponents focus on the knowledge base of scientists. Given that both literatures have developed without explicitly taking the arguments of the neighbouring discipline into account, it is thus unclear whether they explain the same, or different, phenomena. Furthermore, both literatures propose firm level arguments but test them on the basis of macro- rather than micro-level indicators. This paper therefore asks: first, does micro-level evidence support the VoC and NIS arguments that particular types of employee skills and knowledge backgrounds of scientists are needed for different competitive strategies? And, if so, do RPI, IPI, and PI firms need to employ scientists in combination with a workforce having the respective qualifications, or is it sufficient if scientists or employees alone are adequately qualified. Quantitative analyses indicate that a particular mix of scientific knowledge combined with employee skills facilitate RPI, IPI, and PI strategies. The article thus concludes that – despite their similar reasoning – the VoC and the NIS literatures indeed describe different phenomena, without being aware of the synergies created whenever adequate employee and scientific qualifications are hired together.

Imitation therapy for non-verbal toddlers

When imitation skills are not present in young children, speech and language skills typically fail to emerge. There is little information on practices that foster the emergence of imitation skills in general and verbal imitation skills in particular. The present study attempted to add to our limited evidence base regarding accelerating the development of speech/language in young children who have failed to achieve expected language milestones. Imitation therapy (Zedler, 1972) was utilized for five non-verbal 18—19-month-old children to determine if imitative behavior in the form of sound production could be initiated and increased. Treatment was administered until children reached criteria for consistent imitative sound productions. Following 8—9 weeks of therapy, all five children exhibited significant increases in both the number of vocalizations and the variety of phonemes produced, and they demonstrated regular spontaneous verbal imitation and emergence of phonetically consistent forms. Imitation therapy appears to be a promising practice that merits further investigation.

Ouverture de ‘Global Cities and Knowledge Management - 1’

Global markets impose an important transformation of the firms’ growth policies where innovation and imitation (of products and processes) play a primary role to meet a volatile demand. Many countries now have strong links with global corporations and within these countries most activity is concentrated in a few metropolitan areas (world cities). World cities configure aggregation-sites for knowledge-intensive businesses and for populations requiring sophisticated immaterial consumption. Large metropolitan areas of the de-materialized economy are thus assuming the dual role of knowledge creation pole (knowledge hub) and of intangible consumption pole (consumer hub).

Competitiveness in follow-on drug R&D: a race or imitation?

The development of 'follow on' or 'me too' drugs - generally defined as a drug with a similar chemical structure or the same mechanism of action as a drug that is already marketed - has attracted contrasting views. Some have argued that follow-on drugs often provide useful alternative or enhanced therapeutic options for particular patients or patient subpopulations, as well as introducing price competition. Others, however, consider that the development of such drugs is duplicative and that the resources needed would be better directed elsewhere. Implicit in some of this criticism is the notion that the development of me-too drugs is undertaken after a first-in-class drug has made it to market and proved commercially successful. In this Perspective, using analysis of development and patent filing histories of entrants to new drug classes in the past five decades, we provide new evidence that the development of multiple new drugs in a given class is better characterized as a race, rather than the imitation of successful products.

From Waste to Superbrand: The Uneasy Relationship between Vegemite and Its Origins

From Waste to Superbrand: The Uneasy Relationship between Vegemite and Its Origins

The identification of rimonabant polymorphs, sibutramine and analogues of both in counterfeit Acomplia bought on the internet

Acomplia was ordered over the internet resulting in the delivery of counterfeit Acomplia and imitation products. The tablets were analyzed for the presence of rimonabant. Using LC-DAD–MSn the presence of effective quantities of rimonabant was confirmed in samples A–D. Samples A and D also contained traces of the rimonabant analogue NIDA-41020. Furthermore, NIR spectroscopy on the tablets indicated the presence of an unapproved rimonabant polymorph in samples C and D which was confirmed by Raman spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction (XRD). In sample E a low dose of sibutramine was found as well traces of N-desmethylsibutramine and bis-N-desmethylsibutramine. Rimonabant was withdrawn from the market because of serious adverse events and lack of efficacy. The availability of poor quality products with rimonabant, impurities and unapproved polymorphs is worrying. Suspect weight-loss medicines should be screened for the presence of novel analogues.

DEVELOPMENT OF A FLAVOR LEXICON FOR PROCESSED AND IMITATION CHEESES

ABSTRACT In the U.S.A., the production of processed cheese (PC) totaled 1,014 million kg in 2005. These products are made using natural cheese (NC), but imitation products are also available. Functionality and meltability are primary characteristics of these products, but flavor also plays a role. Studies have not focused on the flavor of these products. This study was conducted to identify and define the sensory properties of PC and imitation cheese (Imi). Three dairy experts evaluated 55 PC and Imi for initial language development. Following language development and refinement, 26 PC and Imi were selected and evaluated in triplicate by an experienced sensory panel (n = 8). Data were evaluated by analysis of variance with Fisher's least significant difference for means separation and by principal component analysis. Eighteen aromatics and five basic tastes were documented in the products. PC products, which are made from NC, were characterized by sweet aromatic, cooked/milky, caramelized/toasted cheese, diacetyl, whey, milkfat and brothy flavors. Imis that had casein/caseinates were distinguished by minty flavors and Imis with other protein sources were differentiated by cardboard and oxidized/fatty flavors. This study demonstrated an array of flavor profiles among PC and between PC and Imi. This flavor lexicon can help the industry to better define and differentiate PC and Imi and ultimately to help better understand consumer flavor preferences for these products. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS Processed cheese (PC) makes up a large market segment with processed cheese foods, spreads, and cold pack products and imitation products. These products are distinct from natural cheeses. This study established a defined descriptive flavor language for these products that can help cheese manufacturers understand the flavor profiles of different PC- and imitation cheese-type products.

Imitation: what animal imitation tells us about animal cognition.

Imitation of actions is widespread in the animal kingdom, but the mental capacities thereby implied vary greatly according to the adaptive function of copying. Behavioral synchrony in social species has many possible benefits, including minimizing predation risk and using food resources optimally, but can be understood by the simple cognitive mechanism of response facilitation by priming. Imitation can send a social message, either one of short-term meshing or group identity. Where the imitative match is opaque, as in neonatal imitation, the correspondence problem may imply an innate system of behavior matching; but in other cases, no more than priming may be involved, although there are persistent suggestions that great ape imitation implies empathic abilities. Imitation in the service of learning new skills by following another's example can be divided into contextual imitation (when to employ a familiar action, and to what problem) and production imitation (learning of new skills by imitation). Cognitively, the former requires little more than response facilitation, whereas production imitation needs at least the ability to extract the statistical regularities of repeated action and to incorporate the result into hierarchical program construction. Among our close relatives, only the great apes show much evidence of production imitation of actions, along with the ability to selectively imitate the most rational components of what they observe. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Foreign Direct Investment and the Incentives to Innovate and Imitate*

AbstractWe propose a new channel of FDI spillovers on domestic firms, which operates through imitation of original products. Domestic heterogeneous firms may not introduce any new products, introduce a new product line (innovate), or develop a variety that is a close substitute to an existing product line (imitate). The presence of foreign firms generates incentives for imitation because they introduce original products that are vertically differentiated from domestic products. Using firm‐level panel data for China, we find that increased FDI presence in a given industry leads to more imitation, but not necessarily more innovation, by domestic firms.

New product development and firm value in mobile handset production

We study the effect of new product introduction on firm value. Using a unique sample on mobile phone handset introduction by the 16 largest major handset manufacturers from 1992 to 2002, we distinguish between truly innovative product introduction and imitative product introduction. We find that while most product introduction is imitative, both types of innovation increase firm value. However, truly innovative innovation is found to increase firm value by more than imitative introductions.

Social Deliberation: Nash, Bayes, and the Partial Vindication of Gabriele Tarde

ABSTRACTAt the very end of the 19th century, Gabriele Tarde wrote that all society was a product of imitation and innovation. This view regarding the development of society has, to a large extent, fallen out of favour, and especially so in those areas where the rational actor model looms large. I argue that this is unfortunate, as models of imitative learning, in some cases, agree better with what people actually do than more sophisticated models of learning. In this paper, I contrast the behaviour of imitative learning with two more sophisticated learning rules (one based on Bayesian updating, the other based on the Nash-Brown-von Neumann dynamics) in the context of social deliberation problems. I show for two social deliberation problems, the Centipede game and a simple Lewis sender-receiver game, that imitative learning provides better agreement with what people actually do, thus partially vindicating Tarde.

The emergence of counterfeit trade: a literature review

PurposeTrade in counterfeit goods is perceived as a substantial threat to various industries. No longer is the emergence of imitation products confined to branded luxury goods and final markets. Counterfeit articles are increasingly finding their way into other sectors, including the fast‐moving consumer goods, pharmaceutical, and automotive industries – with, in part, severe negative consequences for consumers, licit manufacturers, and brand owners alike. This paper seeks to shed light on the economic principles of counterfeit trade and the underlying illicit supply chains.Design/methodology/approachAn extensive literature review was conducted that comprised contributions from different strands of management research.FindingsThough governments as well as management have clearly identified the problem, very little is known – both in practice and theory – about the mechanisms and structure of the illicit market, the tactics of counterfeit producers, consumer behavior with respect to imitation products and the financial impact on individual companies. The diversity of the counterfeit phenomenon underlines the need for further research in this area and the development of company‐specific measures for fighting product piracy.Research limitations/implicationsThe clandestine nature of the counterfeit market limits direct accessibility to the phenomenon. Consequently, the existing body of literature does not necessarily cover all aspects of counterfeit activities. The review helps to highlight existing research gaps but may not be able to identify additional aspects of the phenomenon that, thus far, have not been deemed relevant.Originality/valueThe paper critically reviews the current state of research across different management‐related disciplines. From an academic perspective it may serve as a starting point for a future research agenda that addresses the current knowledge gaps. From a practitioner's perspective it is helpful for understanding the relevant influence factors and for developing appropriate, state‐of‐the‐art counterstrategies.

Influence of Moral Affect, Judgment, and Intensity on Decision Making Concerning Counterfeit, Gray-Market, and Imitation Products

We examined the direct effects of moral judgment, moral intensity, and moral affect, specifically shame and guilt, on undergraduates' purchase intent concerning counterfeits, gray-market products, and imitations. The indirect effects of moral intensity, shame, and guilt on moral judgment were also investigated. A between subjects experiment was designed and participants ( n = 313) responded to a scenario. For both the counterfeit and imitation products, moral judgment had a significant negative effect on purchase intent. Moral intensity had no significant effect on purchase intent for all product types but it had significant positive influence on moral judgment for all product types. Guilt had a significant negative influence on purchase intent for gray-market products and a positive influence on moral judgment for all product types. In addition, moral judgment mediated the impact of guilt on intent to purchase gray-market products.

INNOVATION MANAGEMENT IN THE GERMAN TRANSPORTATION INDUSTRY

This article develops a conceptual framework for innovation management in logistics service providers, taking both a macro‐sectoral and a micro‐firm level perspective. Empirical data pertaining to the German transportation industry is applied in order to illustrate the current situation. In the analysis, the author distinguishes between various types of innovation: (1) product/service and process innovation, (2) market novelties, product‐range novelties and product imitations, and (3) ad hoc and planned innovation. The results indicate that despite the importance of innovation for the competitiveness of logistics service providers, innovation activities of firms in this industry and the share of innovators are at a low level compared to other industries. Only 30% of the LSP's are innovators. LSP innovation rests less on structured innovation, new product development and new product commercialization processes, instead, becomes often visible in form of technological advanced infrastructure and equipment investments. It is recommended that in the future LSP's should make more use of one or all forms of innovation activity discussed in this article.