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This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a brand imitation strategy for the package design of male-targeted, female-targeted and gender-neutral products.

Three (2 × 2 × 2) between-subjects factorial experiments were conducted with three independent variables, namely, visual shape, color and logo, each classified as relevant/divergent. The dependent variables were participants’ attitudes toward the brand, attitudes toward the product and purchase intention.

There were no significant main effects or interactions for the male-targeted product. The results for the female-targeted product revealed no significant main effect of visual shape, a significant main effect of color and significant two-way interactions between visual shape and color and between visual shape and logo. Significant main effects were found for visual shape and color for the gender-neutral product.

A color scheme similar to that of a leading brand in the same product category more powerfully influenced participants’ attitudes and purchase intention, while a more holistically similar design had greater impact than a less holistic design. Some “divergence” or distinctive design elements of the female-targeted product positively influenced participants’ attitudes and behavior. These findings suggest that a brand imitation strategy offers a means for competing in the marketplace, but should be used with caution.

A conceptual continuum of brand imitation is proposed, incorporating visual semiotics, creativity theory and gender differences in cognitive styles to provide a more systematic method for delineating brand imitation levels.

This research aims to explore the impact of an overlooked variable, brand typicality, on brand evaluation and the categorization of counterfeits and imitations.

The research design is a 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 mixed design with the first three variables as between-subjects variables and the last as a within-subjects variable on a convenience sample of 287 respondents split into eight experimental conditions. Data are analyzed using Linear Mixed Models.

Results show that brand typicality and brand name and product appearance manipulations impact brand evaluation and categorization. Regarding brand evaluation, under high typicality conditions, any manipulation of brand name and/or product appearance, from identical to different, results in a less favorable evaluation, whereas under low typicality conditions, only brand name manipulation negatively impacts brand evaluation. Concerning categorization, under high typicality conditions, any change in brand name and/or product appearance results in the item’s categorization as an imitation or a counterfeit, whereas under low typicality conditions, the item may be categorized as either genuine or as imitation or counterfeit.

This research demonstrates the impact of brand typicality on both the evaluation and categorization of changes in brand name and product appearance. It also suggests that brands and product classes are not equal vis-à-vis counterfeiting and imitation. High typicality brand seems less vulnerable to counterfeiting and imitation. Findings are discussed regarding brand vulnerability to imitation and counterfeiting, the importance of considering competitive context, brand management and brand strategy.

In the era of digital evolution, companies are increasingly deploying digital platforms to optimize operational efficiencies and to connect with customers more directly. However, little is known about whether and how companies can leverage digital platforms to enhance their brand prestige. Integrating insights from the resource-based view of the firm into the branding literature, this study aims to compare and distinguish the effects of the two digital platform functions, technical and social functions, on a company’s brand prestige. This study also assesses the moderating roles of two institutional factors, market uncertainty and brand imitation.

This study estimates a moderated regression model using a survey of 240 companies in China that deploy digital platforms. This study uses SPSS 24.0 to perform regression analysis.

The study finds that technical functions positively, whereas social functions negatively affect brand prestige. Moreover, the technical functions of digital platforms are more beneficial for companies to build their brand prestige when the market is turbulent and the extent of brand imitation is high, whereas, under the same conditions, social functions lead to lower brand prestige.

There are several limitations of this study that offer future research opportunities. First, due to the difficulties of data collection, measures were taken from the same source for which common method bias could be a potential concern. Second, this study considered two institutional boundary conditions in these models. Future research should consider mediators as well as other potential moderators to understand the underlying mechanisms of how digital platforms affect brand prestige. Third, future studies may develop better constructs to manifest these two types of digital platform functions. Finally, this sample was limited to companies in China.

This study provides important implications for companies leveraging digital platforms to build brands. First, companies must distinguish between the different functions of digital platforms. The findings reveal that companies that leverage digital platforms to build brand prestige are suggested to make greater use of technical functions yet should be cautious in developing social functions. Second, this research suggests although market uncertainty and brand imitation are not conducive to enhancing brand prestige, it is possible for companies to take advantage of these unfavorable environments to better serve niche customers.

Prior marketing studies emphasize the benefits of digital platforms and largely overlook the double-edged sword effect of digital platforms on companies’ brand building. This study contributes to the marketing literature by revealing the benefits of technical function and the challenges of social function in driving brand prestige in complex institutional settings.

The literature on copycat packaging has developed intermittently over a 30-year period, resulting in a divergent and fragmented body of knowledge. This paper aims to synthesise the extant literature to highlight the main developments in the marketing, legal and design fields and, in doing so, contributes to a holistic understanding of the research area and suggests directions for future research.

A systematic literature search retrieved 5,862 articles, and after filtering against explicit criteria, 49 studies were reviewed. These articles were subsequently evaluated and interpreted, producing a synthesis of current research.

The constructs of copycat packaging, including similarity-related concepts, consequences of copycat packaging and mitigating approaches, have been reported across three disciplines of marketing, legal and design, each having its own distinct focus but nonetheless sharing overlapping themes.

This review discusses future directions and proposes a framework of research themes relating to brand enhancement for online purchasing, measurement of brand confusion, reinforcing design features and approaches to mitigating copycat practices.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first systematic review of the literature on copycat packaging. It brings together the latest thinking on copycat packaging and identifies distinct research issues to be addressed in future studies.

The purpose of this paper is to present different naming, packaging, and pricing strategies adopted by private label (PL) retailers in India. This study also aims to identify preferred private label brand (PLB) categories, factors influencing their selection, and the importance of cues in evaluation of PLBs. The overall purpose is to identify important areas for future research of PLBs in the wake of organized retail growth in an emerging economy (India is the context here).

This study is based on in-store observations of major Indian retail chains, longitudinal analyses of customers’ shopping bills, qualitative analyses of consumer interviews, and focus group discussions.

The results indicate that retailers primarily adopt “Sub-branding” (using the store name along with a separate brand name) and “House of Brands” (using a separate brand name only) strategies to sell PLBs in the Indian market. Groceries, food and beverages, and apparel are the preferred categories in PLB. Price, quality, and convenience are the major factors influencing PLB. Taste, ingredients, packaging, price, brand name, and store name are the main factors that are used to evaluate PLBs.

Due to the qualitative analyses and interpretation, there are limitations to this study which need to be empirically validated.

This research has implications for organized retailers in understanding the various strategies used for PLBs in India.

This study is a novel study for documenting the PLB strategies adopted by organized retailers in India. It also uses a longitudinal exploratory approach to further understanding the consumption of PLBs in India.

The shape of a product plays a crucial role in shaping consumer behavior. Despite the voluminous research on factors influencing consumers’ shape preferences, there remains a limited understanding of how the busy mindset, a mentality increasingly emphasized by marketing campaigns, works. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring the relationship between a busy mindset and the preference for angular-shaped versus circular-shaped products and brand logos.

This research consists of seven experimental studies using various shape stimuli, distinct manipulations of busy mindset, different assessments of shape preference and samples drawn from multiple countries.

The findings reveal that a busy mindset leads to a preference for angular shapes over circular ones by amplifying the need for uniqueness. In addition, these effects are attenuated when products are scarce.

This research represents one of the pioneering efforts to study the role of a busy mindset on consumers’ aesthetic preferences. Beyond yielding insights for practitioners into visual marketing, this research contributes to the theories on the busy mindset and shape preference.

This paper aims to uncover consumer evaluations of high-priced traditional retail luxury brands and more affordable neo-mass luxury retail brands when they imitate the innovative designs of one another.

Using a scenario inspired by a lawsuit involving admitted copying practices, this study used a one-way (time of product introduction: the traditional luxury brand launches the product design before the neo-mass luxury brand vs the neo-mass luxury brand launches the product design before the traditional luxury brand) between-subjects experimental design to examine the effect of time of product introduction (such that consumers are aware of imitation practices) on brand attitude, brand equity (measured via the dimensions of brand associations, brand image, brand credibility and brand leadership) and brand preference.

Results reveal that consumer awareness of imitation practices is important in determining changes in brand equity, brand attitude and brand preference, regardless of luxury brand type. The research also indicates that consumers evaluate traditional luxury brands that engage in imitation practices more negatively than neo-mass luxury brands that do so.

This research provides a deeper understanding of consumer response to imitation practices, along with managerial insight for luxury brands operating in that sphere. Limitations and future research directions are also offered.

This study appears to be one of the first to investigate imitation practices by using stimuli inspired by a copycat case, and one of few that assesses consumer evaluations of imitation by existing brands.

Reports a common occurrence in the marketplace: brand imitation. A total of 160 consumers participated in an experiment where goodness of imitation, presence/absence of the imitated brand, reputation of the store and type of product (convenience/luxury) were manipulated. The results show that consumer evaluations of brand imitations do not depend on how good the imitation is. The better the image of the store in which brand imitations of luxury products are distributed, the more positive consumer evaluations. In the case of convenience goods however, the impact of store image on consumer evaluations depends on the presence or absence of the imitated brand. Four consumer characteristics were found to correlate negatively with evaluations of brand imitations: product category involvement, product familiarity, brand sensitivity and generalised brand loyalty.

This present study attempted to examine the difference between brand‐name and bandit technology companies in terms of operating models. Furthermore, the paper aimed to investigate the origin and developmental model of bandit.

This study compared the open innovation approach against a closed one from the perspective of competitive strategies. This study used the content analysis and qualitative system dynamics (QSD) approach to explore the competitive strategies and inhibitory factors of bandit business model, and subsequently presents a causal‐effect loop of business operations development in different stages.

Bandit business model could be divided into three stages, according to the business operations development, namely “growth, inhibition, and re‐growth”. It often faces obstacles, when a bandit business expands to a certain level, stemming from the consequently disadvantageous conditions which limit the enterprise development. A bandit business will not remove such obstacles unless it reinforces its impregnable core values.

This study contributed the attempt to use the qualitative system dynamics (QSD) approach to explore the competitive strategies and inhibitory factors of emerging business model as “bandit”. As bandit products generate high utility for consumers and easily penetrate a demand‐driven market, the Chinese bandit economic behavior (including copycat business practices) omnipresent in the economic market has triggered a controversy across the society. The findings in bandit business model uncovered the reasons that encourage the founding of small‐sized start‐up firms by practitioners, and showed the unseen path for business and innovation model research in the future.

While the current anti-globalisation wave is considered as a regional and cyclical relapse among Western countries, the new era of globalisation has shifted away from stagnant developed economies towards the rising prosperity of emerging Asia, where it is attracting substantial global inward foreign direct investment (FDI). Focussing on Vietnam, the country that is seen as Asia’s next economic tiger, the question of how important intellectual properties (IP) protection is in the international competition for FDI inflows is still unsettled, especially on the under-researched topic of trademarks.

This paper takes on the business history approach, which allows rich evidence from the dynamic and evolving natures of multinational enterprises (MNEs) to drive the research process, so that international business scholars can test models rigorously. The evidence provided in this paper is essentially qualitative and combines trademark registrations data, with trade and FDI statistics between 1986 and 2016, also draws on companies’ archives, industry reports and related newspaper articles.

This paper provides the chronology of intellectual property right (IPR) legal landscapes and the dynamic co-evolution of trademarks and FDI inflows in Vietnam. Three trademark protection strategies for MNEs and their patterns here are addressed. The paper also argues that trademarks bring new insights and IP protection strategy for pharmaceutical MNEs for the case of Vietnam is as important in trademarks as it is in patents. In emerging markets with strong incentives for FDI such as Vietnam, MNEs are not necessarily put off by weak IPR, but rather create alternative strategies for dealing with the lack of IP protection in these emerging market settings.

This study challenges the stream of thoughts that view trademarks as a “neglected intangible asset” among different IPRs, while in fact, trademarks advance MNEs’ knowledge by ensuring competitiveness and long-run survival in emerging markets. This paper is among the first few attempts to look at pharmaceutical industry through the lens of trademarks, moving away from the traditional patent-focussed approach. It extends the understanding of OLI paradigm and highlights that MNEs need to possess Oa and Op advantages not only at the beginning of internationalisation process but rather evolving through the time to cope with imitation risks in the host country.