Do counterfeits only affect luxury brands that are heavily counterfeited?

Prasad, Jaishree (2024) Do counterfeits only affect luxury brands that are heavily counterfeited? Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

Counterfeit trade has been growing incessantly every year and due to its impact on legitimate brands, it has garnered the attention of researchers, policy makers, and brand managers. Research has largely focussed on the direct influence of counterfeits on original luxury brands and has ignored the potential impact of counterfeits on non-luxury brands. Luxury and counterfeit luxury consumption is particularly prominent during status signalling amongst social classes. Literature on socioeconomic status (SES) reveals that self-discrepancies arise from social comparisons, leading consumers to seek compensatory consumption to alleviate these discrepancies through luxury, counterfeit luxury, and non-luxury brands. Therefore, it is crucial to include non-luxury brands in the debate of impact of counterfeits on original brands.

The present research aims to bridge this research gap by investigating the impact of counterfeits on non-luxury brands, beyond luxury brands. Specifically, it explores the substitution mechanism between the three brand substitutes – counterfeit luxury, original luxury, and non-luxury brands. This research is delineated in accordance with SES, brand substitution, and symbolic self-completion as a compensatory consumption strategy to address the self-discrepancies generated by SES. To achieve this aim, it adopted a mixed methods approach which involved a netnographic study, followed by in-depth interviews with 26 consumers based in the UK.

This research provides a comprehensive understanding of the impact of counterfeits on original luxury brands and beyond. In finding that non-luxury brands are also substituted by counterfeit luxury; this research contributes to the counterfeit consumption literature by adding non-luxury brands to the debate related to the concurrent ownership of counterfeits and original luxury brands. Using thematic content analysis, this research identifies four consumer types based on their childhood SES, adulthood SES, and emotional wellbeing (EW) factors and demonstrates how these factors shape the brand substitution between the three brand types (i.e., counterfeit luxury, original luxury, and non-luxury brands). In doing so, this research contributes to the consumer taxonomies by Han et al. (2010) and Wall & Large (2010) that have identified counterfeit and luxury consumption based on wealth and status needs. By unearthing the underlying causes of brand substitution in counterfeit consumption through compensation strategy, it extends the role of symbolic self-completion theory, dissociation, and self-verification theory to counterfeit consumption literature and compensation strategy theory.

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