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Counterfeits are reproductions of a trademarked brand (Cordell et al., 1996) which are
closely similar or identical to genuine articles. This includes packaging, labeling and
trademarks, to intentionally pass off as the original product (Kay, 1990; Chow, 2000;
and Ang et al., 2001). Counterfeiting and piracy are in essence the same since they are
both illegal reproduction of identical copies of authentic products. These two terms
have been used interchangeably (Wee et al., 1995; and Kwong et al., 2003). However,
piracy is mainly related to software and fixed medium content such as film and music
recordings (Chow, 2000; and Cheung and Prendergast, 2006).
Buyers may acquire counterfeit articles either because of not being aware of it
(deceptive counterfeiting) or in spite of knowing the illegal nature of the product (non-deceptive counterfeiting) (Staake et al., 2009). In the first case, the buyer is a
victim, who unknowingly purchases counterfeit goods since they resemble the genuine
goods very closely (Mitchell and Papavassiliou, 1997; Grossman and Shapiro, 1988;
and Tom et al., 1998). However, in the second case, the buyer is a willing consumer of
counterfeit products, wherein s/he purchases counterfeit products even when s/he knows
that the products are illegal (Cordell et al., 1996; and Prendergast et al., 2002).
Research addressing awareness, purchase intentions, demographic characteristics or
the attitudes of counterfeit consumers makes up the largest portion of the publications
dealing with the counterfeit goods (Staake et al., 2009). But most of these researches
have been conducted in the US, Europe and some Asian countries like China, Taiwan
and Singapore. Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy (BASCAP, 2009)
had put some efforts in understanding the Indian consumers’ attitude towards
counterfeiting and piracy. But their effort was limited to metro cities. The present study
therefore attempts to study the drivers for purchasing pirated products in the context of
smaller Indian cities.
The paper first reviews the related literature and explains the adopted research method.
It then analyzes and interprets the data, discusses the limitations of the study and
throws light on future research avenues before concluding.
Literature Review
Counterfeiting research is classified into investigations of supply-side aspects and
demand-side aspects (Bush et al., 1989; and Bloch et al., 1993). However, Staake et al.
(2009) have proposed six categories of counterfeiting research, namely:
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