Search results

Heeding the call for insights into the Sub-Saharan African international marketing context, this study aims to empirically examine consumers' desires and motivations for buying counterfeit luxury goods. It examines influences on consumers' attitudes and purchase intentions related to counterfeit luxury goods in Rwanda, one of Sub-Saharan Africa's fastest-growing economies and growing luxury markets, developing and testing a model examining the effect of social context on personal attributes, providing evidence on economic and social-status factors as drivers for counterfeiting.

The data were collected using an online survey administered in Rwanda to consumers who had previously purchased luxury goods and counterfeits. A total of 312 valid responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

This study found that normative and informational influences had a positive effect on Rwandan consumers' attitude toward purchasing counterfeit luxury products, with attitude influencing purchase intentions directly and indirectly, through mediating variable desire for status or through value consciousness and desire for status.

The study contributes to academic research − one of the first empirical studies to examine consumers' desires and motivations for buying counterfeit luxury goods in Sub-Saharan Africa, providing insights that benefit scholars and practitioners seeking to better understand a market where more than half of the world's fastest economies are located.

While luxury brands have increasingly pursued CSR activities such as corporate donations, this strategy may not be effective because there is an inherent mismatch between the concepts of “luxury” and CSR. The present research examines the effects of different types of donation strategies (frequency-focused vs. amount-focused).

Two experimental studies were conducted. Study 1 provides initial evidence to our prediction that a frequency-focused strategy is beneficial for luxury (vs. non-luxury) brands to leverage their positive brand evaluations. Study 2 further replicates this using a different brand and establishes the underlying mechanism.

Findings show that a frequency-focused strategy is beneficial for luxury (vs. non-luxury) brands to leverage their positive brand evaluations. This is because a frequency-focused strategy makes consumers perceive the luxury brand's commitment to help, which in turn reduces consumers’ skepticism toward their CSR activities.

The study illustrates a novel mechanism that shows when and how different corporate donations influence luxury brand evaluations.