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To identify ways for business managers to reduce consumer complicity with counterfeit products by better aligning their actions with consumer beliefs of complicity.

A mall intercept methodology was used to interview 54 US and 48 Brazilian business managers' understandings of consumer complicity with counterfeit products. A parallel web survey containing the questions in the interviews was used to assess 401 US and 390 Brazilian consumers' perceptions of what is important to them in determining that a product is counterfeit, the reasons why they were willing to acquire counterfeits, and the perceived effectiveness of anti‐counterfeiting actions.

Managers in both countries held beliefs that ran counter to those of the complicit consumer, particularly in the areas of understanding the reasons for consumer complicity and the perceived effectiveness of anti‐counterfeiting actions to reduce that complicity. Several anti‐counterfeiting actions considered to be of little use by managers were reported to be important by consumers regarding their intended complicity.

As the different motivations of consumer complicity with counterfeit products in different country markets become better known, managers can reduce their loss of business to counterfeiters by directly targeting those factors each country's consumers believe affect their complicity.

Comparing manager and consumer views of complicity with counterfeit products and the anti‐counterfeiting actions that can reduce that complicity in two country markets.

The purpose of this paper is to guide marketing managers in their efforts to decrease consumer demand for counterfeits of their products by examining the consumer beliefs and attitudes that have been found to support consumer complicity across multiple products, in virtual and physical shopping environments, using several criteria of complicity for each product.

A web‐based survey of 254 students explored two ethical ideologies (idealism and relativism), collectivism, and two attitudes toward counterfeits (ethical concern and perceived quality) with respect to two counterfeit products (movies and pharmaceuticals) and reported respondents' complicity in both a virtual and physical marketplace for each good.

Consumer complicity – a consumer's willingness to obtain, share, or use counterfeit products – was predicted by the consumers' hedonic shopping experience and lack of ethical concern with two different counterfeit products. The effects of ethical ideologies and collectivism on consumer complicity were observed to operate indirectly through hedonic shopping and ethical concern with using counterfeits.

The primary limitation is the use of a convenience sample of US college students and future research should take the scale items developed in this study and test in multiple country markets.

The paper extends previous research by examining several identified predictors of complicity with different products, across virtual and physical markets, and with multiple criteria incorporating both acquisition, intent to acquire, and willingness to share.

The purpose of this investigation is to examine the explanatory powers of a consumer complicity framework that uses counterfeit products and five emerging country markets (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). A web survey was administered to 1,600 consumers in Brazil, Russia, India, and China to test whether demographics, national origin, perceived quality, price, and a hedonic shopping environment predicted consumers' complicity in these emerging markets. Overall, the results found little support for either demographics or national origin to predict this type of illicit consumption. The best predictive variables were perceived quality, price, and hedonic shopping experience. The study concludes with a model that incorporates these results and suggests that future research employ demarketing tactics using both cognitive dissonance and expected utility theories to obtain a more holistic view for curbing complicity that goes beyond product attributes and the shopping environment.

This study examines how potentially irresponsible banking operations affect organisational reputation. A moderated mediation model is applied to explain how major aspects of social irresponsibility affect the relationship between consumer awareness of allegedly irresponsible operations, blame and bank reputation. The empirical context is the Swiss franc mortgage crisis that affected the banking industry in most Central and Eastern European countries.

The research study uses data collected from a large survey (N = 1,000) conducted among Polish bank consumers, including those with mortgage loans in Swiss francs. To test the proposed model, the authors use Hayes' process macro.

The findings show that blame fully mediates the effects of corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) awareness on organisational reputation. Three facets of social irresponsibility moderate this relationship. Specifically, the perceived harm and intentionality of corporate culprits cause people to be more likely to blame a bank for the difficulties posed by indebted consumers. At the same time, the perceived complicity of consumers in misselling a mortgage reduces the level of blame and its subsequent adverse effects on bank reputation.

Although a strong reputation is crucial in the financial industry, few studies have attempted to address reputational risk from a consumer perspective. This study helps to understand how potentially irresponsible selling of a financial product can adversely affect a bank's reputation.

Many thanks to Professors Marko Sarstedt, Manfred Schwaiger, and Charles R. Taylor, Volume 22 has assembled a set of outstanding articles addressing the methodological issues in international marketing research. Readers should find these articles informative and valuable. In addition to these articles on the special topic of international marketing research methods, a regular article is included in Volume 22. Advances in International Marketing encourages innovative research and “out-of-the-box” research ideas in international marketing. In future volumes, it will continue to promote special topic-based volumes, while also publishing “regular” papers that are reviewed outside of the themed volumes. The regular papers must show innovative research that addresses any significant issues in international marketing and should be submitted to the Series Editor.

Global counterfeiting is escalating despite resistance by many parties. We identify three groups of stakeholders who have vested interests in either resisting or promoting counterfeiting. Among resistors to counterfeiting are national governments, international policymakers, and corporate intellectual property owners; among promoters are the counterfeiters themselves and many consumers. We argue that current supply‐side resistance approaches alone are inadequate; attention is also needed to resisting consumer promoters on the demand‐side of the market. Drawing from a review of the literature, we develop a new analytical framework which depicts complex interfaces between IP owners and consumers. A second framework presents actionable marketing strategies targeted to different consumer segments.

The major findings of this exploratory research are that a firm’s level of market commitment through future investments will increase in strategically important markets, regardless of high consumer complicity to purchase fake goods; that companies will employ additional anti‐counterfeiting tactics in markets with a high level of pirates and a high degree of enforcement of its intellectual property rights; and that companies employ a standardized approach of anti‐counterfeiting tactics targeted at consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the efficacy of messages in anti-counterfeiting campaigns that use a fear of legal prosecution, role models, peer pressure, linkages to organized crime and education.

A web survey of consumer perceptions regarding the effectiveness of different anti-counterfeiting campaigns on complicity was administered to 1,786 consumers in Brazil, China, India, Russia and the USA.

The effectiveness of the different anti-counterfeiting campaigns varies by country. Some can be used more successfully than others to limit complicity with the goal to transform consumers from accomplices of infringers to advocates of authenticity.

An unexpected finding of this study was that several of the anti-counterfeiting campaigns were perceived as effective by consumers who reside in countries, such as China, that are well known for flourishing domestic counterfeit markets. Thus, these exploratory results provide a starting point for future researchers and practitioners to create and evaluate the efficacy of messages in anti-counterfeiting campaigns in markets where counterfeits and pirated goods are readily accessible in both physical and virtual markets.

Prior research establishes why consumers accept counterfeit and pirated products and also suggests a number of strategies to decrease its occurrence, mostly from a managerial perspective. This is the first multi-country study to assess whether consumers believe anti-counterfeiting campaigns will curb product counterfeiting.

Across much of the developed and developing world the last few years have been marked by protest against institutions and corporations. Much has been said about the significance of these protests, indeed books broadly supportive of anti‐corporate protest compete for ratings against management gurus in the best selling business book charts. In this paper we explore how the technology of marketing is implicated within the organisation and representation of anti‐corporate protests. We argue that the cynical and unreflexive manner in which cultural critics engage with marketing, and their attempts to distance marketing from activities that they privilege, may have consequences for the anti‐corporate movement. This paper concludes with a sense of pessimism about the current tactics employed by anti‐corporate protestors but hope in the potentiality of marketing to develop a sense of individual responsibility.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the phenomenon of experience copycats. Despite being a growing problem for organisations selling extraordinary experiences, it remains a largely under-researched field of study. By analysing consumers’ sense of the extraordinary brand experience copycats in which they have participated, it becomes possible to detect the meanings they ascribe to imitations of experiential features as opposed to experiential themes.

The paper is based on the ethnographic study of a group of individuals who spent 12 days on a Québec copycat of the Way to Compostela. The methods include participant observation, photos, non-directive interviews, semi-directive interviews and introspection.

The paper’s main contribution is to demonstrate that participants in extraordinary experience copycats do not ascribe meanings to them based solely on their own personal feelings. Instead, their appraisals tend to be intersubjective, with each individual judgment being influenced by other participants’ opinions. This explains why copycat experiences can, for instance, be valued very positively at a thematic level even as consumers’ individual appraisals might hightlight negative differences in terms of features.

The battle against experience copycats does not, on the face of things, seem very useful insofar as consumers attribute copycats a meaning that complements the way in which they view original brands. Consumers tend to neither conflate nor contrast the two but instead consider them complementary. The end result is that original brands should seek more to cohabit with these copycats than to treat them aggressively, even as they develop a defensive posture to avoid excessive value slippage.

The study demonstrates that the battle against experience copycats becomes more difficult once participants who appreciate and defend the imitation have developed a sense of community

This paper focuses on copycats, a topic where very little research exists. It seeks to transcend customary economic and socio-psychological approaches by examining deliberate lookalike uses and experiences via the ethnographic method.