Integrating consumers’ motives with suppliers’ solutions to combat Shanzhai: A phenomenon beyond counterfeit

Imitation goods are widely spread throughout the global business world. Shanzhai imitation (

) represents a type of imitation that mimics the original brand through surface or functional similarities but often provides enhanced or innovative features adapted to local market needs. Although both practitioners and academics have studied and provided solutions to combat counterfeits, solutions for original brand manufacturers to address threats from Shanzhai products are lacking. In this article, we first differentiate Shanzhai products from counterfeits. Using a mixed-method approach that combines interviews and laboratory experiment results, we then identify social, individual, functional, and financial (SIFF) factors as driving forces behind consumers’ purchasing of Shanzhai products. Shanzhai buyers place more weight on functional value and price/quality ratio than do counterfeit buyers, who in turn favor social value and materialism more than Shanzhai buyers. Finally, we provide several recommendations to original manufacturers from both the demand and supply sides.     

Strategies to detect and reduce counterfeiting activity

While at one time counterfeit products were largely restricted to watches, designer apparel, and movies, today counterfeiting is a major problem in such diverse product categories as pharmaceuticals, automotive parts, and computer software. There are four distinct types of counterfeits: knockoffs, counterfeits that are reverse engineered from genuine goods, goods produced by outsourced suppliers on “third shifts,” and goods that do not meet a manufacturer's standards but are not properly labeled as seconds or destroyed. The quality of some counterfeits is so good that some major retailers have unknowingly purchased counterfeits. But while there are new forms of counterfeit goods, there are also new strategies for combating counterfeiting. This article describes how to detect and reduce counterfeiting activity, via a plan which consists of four steps: (1) developing early warning signals of counterfeiting; (2) budgeting to monitor, deter, and remove counterfeits; (3) using demand-side strategies to deter counterfeiting; and (4) using supply-side strategies to deter counterfeiting.     

Genuine brands or high quality counterfeits: An investigation of luxury consumption in China

This study examines the effects of different marketing and manufacturing factors on the perceived quality gap and willingness to pay (WTP) for genuine luxury brands. Using the survey data of 786 Chinese consumers, the results show that three marketing factors (product innovation, price promotion, and sales environment) and two manufacturing factors (production in country of brand origin and difficulty in producing the products) all indirectly influence WTP through a perceived quality gap between originals and counterfeits. These effects differ significantly among consumers with different counterfeit and genuine brand purchasing experiences. For consumers with counterfeit purchasing experience, it is important to emphasize the manufacturing factors in the marketing strategies; however, for consumers who only buy genuine brands, marketing factors play a more important role. Copyright © 2016 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Country matters: Executives weigh in on the causes and counter measures of counterfeit trade

In this article, we present the findings of a study examining the exploding problem of counterfeit trade via the opinions of U.S. executives as compared to their counterparts from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Tahiti. Their responses provide insight as to how companies in different countries are attacking piracy and consumer complicity with counterfeit products. Per our study, executives in Australia, Tahiti, and the U.S. had similar perspectives: they viewed the seller as the main driver of counterfeit trade for reasons of profit. These executives perceived the demand for counterfeits as being driven by desirable product attributes and the ease of obtaining them. Likewise, they cited two anti-counterfeiting actions—site licenses and reduced price/rebates—as being able to reduce the demand for illicit products. In contrast, South African executives observed the main reason for piracy as weak enforcement of intellectual property (IP) and the lure of exorbitant profits, with little value in any anti-counterfeiting actions other than special packaging. These executives put forth that South African consumers are complicit due to limited education and low disposable income, and the ready availability of counterfeits. Executives from New Zealand were the most optimistic, believing that piracy and complicity can be reduced by many anti-counterfeiting actions, including special packaging, reducing price, emphasizing product benefits/warranties, stressing the harmful effects of using fake products, offering site licenses, and listing of authorized sellers.     

The moderating effect of need for belonging and communal-brand connection on counterfeit purchasing

Developing social-links among consumers can increase firm performance but does having a communal-brand connection impact counterfeit consumption? Two studies are implemented to explore this question. Study 1 finds that there is a positive relationship between moral beliefs towards counterfeits and willingness to purchase counterfeits. Study 1 also discovers that a weak to average communal-brand connection moderates this relationship. However, study 2 reveals that need for belonging is a stronger moderator. In particular, consumers with a low to average need for belonging are less willing to purchase counterfeits when they hold unfavorable moral beliefs towards counterfeits but are more willing when they hold favorable moral beliefs. The results suggest that need for belonging levels influences a consumer's willingness to purchase counterfeit products. Managers are encouraged to promote messages to their brand communities that decrease moral beliefs towards counterfeits, such as counterfeit consumers are inauthentic and immoral.     

Semi-Automatic Identification of Counterfeit Offers in Online Shopping Platforms

Product counterfeiting in online platforms is an increasingly serious problem causing estimated losses of billions of dollars every year. The huge number of online shops and offered products call for largely automated approaches to identify likely counterfeits, although identifying counterfeits is very difficult even for humans. The authors propose the adoption of a semi-automatic workflow to inspect product offers in online platforms and to determine likely counterfeit offers based on different criteria. Such suspicious offers are to be presented to a domain expert for manual verification. The workflow includes steps to match and cluster similar product offers, and to assess the counterfeit suspiciousness based on different criteria. The goal is to support the periodic identification of many counterfeit offers with a limited amount of manual effort. The authors also present a preliminary evaluation of the proposed approach on a case study using the eBay platform.     

消费者购买仿冒品行为的理论探析

知名品牌的仿冒和非法贸易问题一直困扰着各国政府和相关企业,反仿冒也陷入了一场无休止的战争。传统的反仿冒策略大多针对仿冒品的供给方,而没有关注仿冒品的需求方,缺乏对消费者购买仿冒品行为的理解,也缺乏相应地有效抑制需求的政策措施。本文在整理和分析现有文献的基础上,借助行为科学的相关理论,从消费者购买仿冒品的动机、行为意向、购买决策、认知失调处理等方面对消费者购买仿冒品的行为进行了理论分析,以期深刻理解仿冒品购买行为的内在机制,为企业制定反仿冒策略提供理论依据和新的思路。     

Consuming counterfeit: A study of consumer moralism in China

The consumption of counterfeits is a central theme in understanding consumer moralism. While some studies on marketing have highlighted the consumption motives and socio‐economic factors behind this seemingly unethical phenomenon, research on the subjective experiences of consumers and the cultural concerns about the consumption of counterfeits is lacking. The aim of this article is to gain a better understanding of how consumers construct and negotiate their moralistic identities through engaging in counterfeit consumption. We also examine how consumers utilize counterfeit goods as symbolic resources to echo, or even reproduce, the entrenched Chinese social relationships and marketplace ideological conditions. Our findings suggested that the research participants attempted to make sense of their counterfeit consumption behaviour by infusing the moralistic meanings drawn from the Chinese socio‐cultural value orientation. The study concludes that the moral identity work and counterfeit consumption practices are interwoven in a web of multiple discourses and resources available in the contemporary marketplace under the overarching consumer moralism framework.     

Purchasing Counterfeit and Legitimate Products in China: Social and Psychological Correlates and Predictors

Actual purchases of counterfeit and legitimate (brand-name) products in China were studied, with dissimilar variables found to predict the different types of purchases. Buying counterfeits correlated positively with self-monitoring, need for dominance, face-work, risk-taking, and worry about inflation but negatively with perfectionism. Regression analysis revealed that need for dominance, risk-taking, and worry about inflation predicted purchasing counterfeits. Buying legitimates correlated positively with self-monitoring, need for dominance, self-esteem, and perfectionism, but negatively with worry about inflation. Regression analyses found that self-monitoring and perfectionism predicted purchasing legitimates. A separate regression found that purchasing counterfeits was a negative predictor of receiving esteem from others.     

Disentangling the effect of exploratory learning and exploitative learning in product innovation process

Although studies have highlighted the importance of exploratory and exploitative learning in new product development, little is understood about the distinctiveness of team‐level exploratory and exploitative learning in the distinct phases of the product development process. This study uses a two‐phase product innovation process model to examine the differences in the effects of the two distinct learning strategies in the initiation and implementation phases. The findings from 126 teams show that (a) the effect of exploratory learning on innovativeness in the initiation phase is greater than that of exploitative learning and (b) exploitative learning can strengthen the link between the initiation phase's innovativeness and new product success more than exploratory learning. Copyright © 2013 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modeling Determinants of Cross Border Trade in Counterfeit Goods

Production and trade in counterfeit products has become an estimated $60 billion a year industry. The existence of markets for bogus goods has far reaching consequences in areas of public policy, international relations, balance of payments, corporate profits and taxes, and consumer welfare. Despite these issues, little scholarly research has been conducted in this area. The authors propose a model to explain international trade in counterfeits as a framework for research.     

Product Procurement: A Comparison of Taiwanese and US Retail Companies

The buying function of Taiwanese and US retailers differs in several areas. The consingment method of selling is very prevalent in Taiwan but rarely used in the US. Taiwanense retail buyers were found to have less buying and retail experience than their US counterparts. However, neither buying nor retail experience were found to be significantly retaled to taiwanese buyers' attitudes about product procurement. Significant differences were identified between Taiwanese and US retail buyers' attitudes about country of origin and perceived value of imported merchandise. Taiwanese buyers were found to be more likely to rely on country of origin as an information cue than their US counterparts. On the other hand, as compared to Taiwanese buyers, US buyers were found more likely to percieve foreign apparel as having value than domestically manufactured products.     

Business‐to‐Business Branding: A Review and Assessment of the Impact of Non‐Attribute‐Based Brand Beliefs on Buyer's Attitudinal Loyalty

Business‐to‐business branding has received increasing attention from researchers in the last few years. Nonetheless, there is no agreement on the relative contribution of a brand versus an offering's functional attributes to the industrial buyer's preferences. Drawing on models from the business‐to‐consumer context, this paper demonstrates that non‐attribute‒based brand beliefs are predictors of hedonic outcomes as measured by industrial buyers' attitudinal loyalty, while attribute‐based brand beliefs are not. Moreover, the moderating role of the buyer's level of knowledge for the value‐generating process is identified, suggesting that the impact of non‐attribute‒based brand beliefs on attitudinal loyalty is greater for buyers with a low level of knowledge. Copyright © 2012 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Devil might wear Prada,but Narcissus wears counterfeit Gucci! How social adjustive functions influence counterfeit luxury purchases

People buy counterfeit luxury goods for a range of reasons, including status and belonging. Previous research has shown these stem from an individual's value-expressive or social-adjustive attitudes. However, there appears to be limited research identifying a clear causal relationship between these and intention to purchase counterfeit goods, or how these attitude functions might be used to inhibit purchase of counterfeit luxury products. Using a mixed (survey/experiment) design, in two studies this research demonstrates an individual's social adjustive function has a positive influence on purchase intent for counterfeit luxury goods. However, the use of value expressive ad appeals can limit this effect on consumer decision making. The findings also demonstrate the existence of contingent effects across different levels of product involvement and product knowledge. The contingent effects help better understand the inconsistent findings in the literature regarding the influence of value-expressive and social-adjustive functions on counterfeit purchase intention, and shed light on the interplay among these variables.     

Antecedents of attitude and intention towards counterfeit symbolic and experiential products

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of price consciousness, perceived risk, and ethical obligation on attitude and intention towards counterfeit products. Data were collected from a sample of 200 respondents via an online questionnaire. A conceptual model was derived and tested via structural equation modelling in the contexts of symbolic and experiential counterfeit products. Findings show differences in the factors (and weight thereof) impacting attitude and purchase intention in the two product contexts. Specifically, ethical obligation and perceived risk are found to be significant predictors of attitude towards both symbolic and counterfeit products, while price consciousness is found to predict only attitude towards experiential products, but not purchase intention in either counterfeit product context.     

The (Dis)Advantage of Friendship on Information Search and Satisfaction

Across four experiments, and focusing on consumer behaviour in a high uncertainty market (i.e., a used car market), this research shows that prior to a purchase, buyers are less motivated to search for information when they purchase a product from a friend (compared to someone they do not know). We also show that buyers are more willing to search for information after a transaction when sellers are their friends, a reversal in search behaviour due to the greater social risk that buyers bear when dealing with a friend. Finally, this research shows that both the transaction outcome (i.e., positive versus negative) and the buyer–seller relationship determine the degree to which people are satisfied or dissatisfied with a seller. Copyright © 2018 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Determinants of purchase luxury counterfeit products in social commerce: The mediating role of compulsive internet use

Research on counterfeit purchase intention has attracted enough attention, and a number of studies have investigated various determinants of luxury counterfeit purchase intention in the offline context. However, less attention has focused on the underlying mechanism of the attitude toward luxury counterfeit purchase intention in the social commerce context. Moreover, extant literature has focused on the influence of compulsive internet use (CIU) on psychological well-being. Based on flow theory, this study examines the mediating role of CIU in the relationship between influencing factors (such as materialism, novelty-seeking behavior, and hedonic benefits) and consumers’ attitudes toward luxury counterfeit products. Additionally, the moderating role of product conspicuousness and positive online reviews also examined the direct effects. Data were collected from active online users of Taobao.com. Results show that materialism and novelty-seeking behavior are significantly related to CIU and subsequently influence the attitude toward luxury counterfeit goods. Furthermore, product conspicuousness and positive online reviews have moderated the direct effect of the conceptual framework. Therefore, the current research contributes to the existing literature by addressing the mediating CIU and moderating (product conspicuousness and positive online reviews) factors that played a significant role in promoting counterfeit purchase intention, comparing the direct effect to promote the counterfeit purchase intention. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in detail.     

Managing product safety of imported Chinese goods

While recent recalls and scares have focused greatly on Chinese manufactured toys and foodstuffs, the issue of product safety extends to a wide variety of Chinese-produced goods. The supply chain in China is characterized by cost pressures and quality fade, multiple levels of outsourcing often involving small producers, a large number of counterfeit goods, Chinese cleverness at evading detection, and poor product safety surveillance by both the Chinese and U.S. governments. While some of these characteristics are present in other developing economies, few countries—save China—face all of these issues. To best counteract these forces, companies which outsource goods from China need a well-defined strategy to improve product safety. This strategy should encompass the practices of developing an organizational unit responsible for product safety, securing greater control over raw material sourcing in China, using extreme care in choosing Chinese subcontractors, conducting continuous product testing by multiple parties, being especially vigilant for counterfeits, and improving product traceability. Toward the end of ensuring items which meet quality standards, product safety auditing allows firms to assess their management of product safety of Chinese-made goods.     

How do you feel when you see a list of prices? the interplay among price dispersion,perceived risk and initial trust in Chinese C2C market

The issues of trust fraud, product genuineness and price dispersion jointly make Chinese C2C buyers difficult to identify trustworthy sellers with a low price. Little is known about the generation of initial trust when buyers search products and receive lists of widely ranged prices. This study proposes a theoretical model to explain how price dispersion interacts with other factors in C2C purchase, such as initial trust, perceived risk, perceived value and purchase intention. Product type is considered as a moderator. 261 students were invited in a survey-based experiment. The results from PLS analysis show that price dispersion negatively affects perceived value, whilst, positively affects perceived risk, which further influences perceived value negatively. Price dispersion also negatively influences initial trust through perceived risk. Moreover, the negative effects of price dispersion are stronger when buyers purchase high-touch products.     

Preserving intellectual property rights: Managerial insight into the escalating counterfeit market quandary

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports that counterfeit goods seizures were up 83% in 2006. While a plethora of anti-counterfeiting strategies target distribution channels, international organizations, pirates, and company-based initiatives, few reports debate the effectiveness of these distinct anti-counterfeiting tactics to curb the problem. For this study we conducted in-depth interviews with United States managers to gauge the efficacy of various anti-counterfeiting tactics to preserve intellectual property rights. The results indicate that corporate managers find the practice of encouraging distributors to notify the manufacturer about counterfeits, as well as educating both employees and channel members about the counterfeit problem, to be some of the most effective ways to fight pirates. However, the managers report many other tactics are futile, including providing financial incentives for distributors to reject counterfeits and stressing the harmful effects of fake goods in advertising. We recommend a specific program that firms can employ to deter counterfeiting, including managing the registration of all trademarks and patents in key markets, establishing a company-based enforcement team, monitoring the growth of fakes through a central information repository, developing a muti-pronged action plan, and preparing to fight pirates through investigative work in conjunction with local law enforcement.