Understanding Motivations to Purchase Counterfeit Items in China

The extant literature in counterfeit consumption is currently dominated by quantitative studies (except for Gentry et al. 2001; Hoe et al. 2003; Eisend and Schuchert-Guler 2006), which are useful in validating relationships. This paper aims to provide qualitative data in understanding why consumers purchase and consume counterfeits. Specifically, this paper aims to generate new insights of counterfeit consumption as well as its antecedents in an unstructured setting. Furthermore, most of the previous studies examined only a few antecedents of counterfeit consumption in each study (e.g., Bloch, Bush, and Campbell 1993; Cordell, Wongtada, and Kieschnick 1996). A study examining all identified antecedents within a common framework provides a comprehensive understanding of the phenomena, especially the relative importance of different factors on counterfeit consumption. China, a giant in producing and consuming counterfeit items and a place where many international marketers would like to enter, is a fertile ground to examine counterfeit consumption for both its breadth and depth (BASCAP 2007). Furthermore, a better understanding of the factors that drive the consumption of fraudulent products in China would be helpful to international marketers in devising strategies to combat counterfeit consumption from a consumer perspective.