Identifying moderators of brand attachment for driving customer purchase intention of original vs counterfeits of luxury brands

By Hans Rüdiger Kaufmann, Dan Petrovici, Cid Gonçalves Filho, Adriano Ayres. 2016

138 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Few studies have examined the relationships between brands and consumers in the context of counterfeiting. In this context, this research aims to explore how the attachment of a consumer with a luxury brand can affect her/his decision to buy counterfeits, and how this relates to her/his public self-consciousness. Two survey based studies were conducted among potential counterfeit buyers in Brazil. A sample of middle-class female fashion shoppers from Brazil was used to test the hypotheses in study 1 (n=532) and study 2 (n=276). Innovatively, this research provides convincing implications for the need to differentiate counterfeiting theory between emerging and developed economies. Evidence of the positive impact of actual self-congruence and ideal self-congruence on brand attachment to luxury brands in emerging economies is provided. The role of brand attachment is in contrast to findings reported in other emerging economies. Interestingly, the results demonstrate that the purchase of counterfeits is a more hedonic process compared to the purchase of originals (study 1). The effect of brand attachment on the willingness to buy counterfeits may vary according to how attachment is measured (study 2). Yet, brand attachment has a consistent positive effect on intentions to purchase originals. Producing increments in the emotional brand attachment level can reduce the behavioural intentions of purchasing counterfeits. Hence, the findings suggest that the creation of emotional links with brands can be an appropriate strategy to reduce counterfeiting.

Subfields: Marketing, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/306161727a1eb55c1b3323d7aef2aefafe6a5253

How researchers see this paper

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In Marketing

1. Arnold Japutra
2. Lyndon Simkin
3. Y. Ekinci
4. K. Kaplanidou
5. A. Apostolopoulou
6. D. Papadimitriou

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

1. Arnold Japutra
2. Lyndon Simkin
3. Y. Ekinci

Citations in the corpus

• Self-congruence, brand attachment and compulsive buying (2017, background): “Extant research displays that being attached to brands increases the tendency to purchase the brands’ products, which may end up in compulsive buying (e.g. Horvath & van Birgelen, 2015; Kaufmann et al., 2016).”