Voluntary purchase of counterfeit products: empirical evidence from four countries

Counterfeiting, i.e. producing and selling copies of branded products that strongly resemble the original, has emerged as a major problem for global marketers, rising dramatically over the past years. Surprisingly, factors driving the demand for fake products have attracted far less attention than supply side remedies. This paper attempts to redress this imbalance by investigating the demand for counterfeits. Specifically, we consolidate existing findings and develop a comprehensive, yet parsimonious model of the antecedents and drivers of voluntary counterfeit purchases. Following the frequent call for more cross-national comparisons, we used a sample of over 900 consumers from Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Austria and Mexico to test our model. This large scale approach calls existing findings into question and raises provocative thoughts guiding future research in the area