Validating the Potency of Attitude in Predicting Intention to Purchase Non-Deceptive Counterfeit Branded Products

Introduction

Counterfeiting can be understood as the unauthorized replication of genuine branded products (Malik et al., 2020). Counterfeit branded products are prima facie indistinguishable from their genuine counterparts (Chand & Fei, 2021). Thus, counterfeiters illicitly encroach on the trademarks and copyrights of the manufacturers of genuine branded products (Pratt & Zeng, 2019). This phenomenon has witnessed an unprecedented surge in recent years (Davidson et al., 2019). The menace has spread like a wildfire and has devoured almost all product categories in all the countries (Veloutsou & Bian, 2008). For a better understanding of consumer unethical behavior, counterfeiting has been bifurcated into two categories: deceptive and non-deceptive counterfeiting (Grossman & Shapiro, 1988). In both the categories, the product in question is not an authentic article. The difference lies in the nature of consumers’ involvement in the transaction. In deceptive counterfeiting, consumers are nescient of the fact that the product they are being sold is a counterfeit branded product, and they buy that product under the impression of it being a genuine branded product (Malik et al., 2020). In its polar opposite, i.e., non-deceptive counterfeiting, consumers have full cognizance that the product they are buying is a counterfeit branded product (Eisend, 2019). The latter is an epitome of consumer connivance and thus represents an opposite choice for the present study because it is only in this context that consumers’ real motivations behind the purchase of counterfeit branded products are likely to be unearthed (Veloutsou & Bian, 2008).

Counterfeiting has detrimental economic repercussions (Penz et al., 2009) such as loss of tax revenues (Eisend, 2019), engendering joblessness (Koay, 2018), impeding economic growth (Bloch et al., 1993) inter alia. It contributed to 3.3% of the global trade in 2016 (OECD/EUIPO, 2019). This brazen phenomenon is further alleged to have created a ₹1 lakh crore hole in the Indian economy in 2019 alone (The Economic Times, 2020). Apart from the ruinous macro-economic effects, counterfeiting has various other ramifications also. Genuine brand manufacturers are deprived of billions of dollars in sales revenue (Koay, 2018), the brand equity of the genuine brand deteriorates (Bian & Haque, 2020; Gentry et al., 2006) and the cost associated with instigating the measures to combat counterfeiting increases (Veloutsou & Bian, 2008), the burden of which is ultimately passed on to the consumers of genuine branded products. It is due to the overpowering financial significance of the counterfeiting activity that it has garnered notable research attention (Malik et al., 2020). However, most of such research has been conducted in developed countries only (Ang et al., 2001; Bian & Moutinho, 2009; Michaelidou & Christodoulides, 2011; Randhawa et al., 2015). Even though the plight is shared both by the developed and the emerging economies (Eisend et al., 2017), research in the latter is conspicuously exiguous. Given that most of such developing countries are provenance economies (OECD/EUIPO, 2019), more research in emerging economies is warranted to advance our embryonic understanding of consumers’ willing counterfeit purchase behavior (Kaufmann et al., 2016; Malik et al., 2020; Singh et al., 2021). Burgess & Steenkamp (2006) warned against the generalization of the knowledge created in the developed economies owing to the cultural differences and other idiosyncrasies prevalent in the emerging economies. The above arguments lend support to carrying out this research in the context of an emerging economy, India.