| Pub. Date | : Jan, 2019 |
|---|---|
| Product Name | : The IUP Journal of Management Research |
| Product Type | : Article |
| Product Code | : IJMR41901 |
| Author Name | : Laxmi Roy Singh and Sunpreet Kaur Sahni |
| Availability | : YES |
| Subject/Domain | : Management |
| Download Format | : PDF Format |
| No. of Pages | : 11 |
Counterfeit products are replicas of genuine brands having identical packaging, trademarks and labels. India is not new to counterfeit products. Various studies have highlighted the growing demand for and consumers purchasing these products to satisfy their need to be socially accepted and for showcasing their status. In the Indian context, scant research has been conducted exploring the factors influencing the purchase intention towards counterfeit products. The present paper focuses on the dimension of materialism, one of the factors, that has not been documented and explored in the Indian setting and is identified as a research gap. A conceptual model is proposed, featuring various dimensions which influence materialism and eventually result in purchase of the counterfeit products. The literature is extensively reviewed to gauge as to how the constructs of life satisfaction, self-monitoring, family structure and status consumption are moderated by social conformity, eventually leading to materialism and purchase intention. This paper will help the marketers to frame their marketing and communication strategies by considering these determinants which will trigger the purchase intention of the consumers towards counterfeit products in the Indian marketplace.
Consumer decision to buy fake goods has given rise to a worldwide crisis of existence for original brands. Counterfeit products are those which bear a trademark that is identical to, or indistinguishable from, a trademark registered by another party and violates the rights of the owner (Kapferer, 1995; Chaudhry and Walsh, 1996; and Eisend and Schuchert-Guler, 2006). The demand for consumption of counterfeit has grown dramatically in the past few years. The items include electronics, food stuff, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, etc. Although consumers are aware of the ethical issues related to counterfeit products (Nill and Schultz, 1996), research has unfolded the fact that approximately one-third of the consumers would knowingly buy illicit goods (Tom et al., 1998; and Phau et al., 2001). In addition, Grossman and Shapiro (1988) opine that consumers buy counterfeit products deliberately. As demand for these products escalated, the market flourished to grow at a fast pace, and has become a topic of debate amongst many researchers. The demand from the consumers is a major reason encouraging the existence and growth of counterfeit products (Ang et al., 2001).