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This paper aims to theorize that millennials' counterfeit buying behavior is partly driven by perceived peer counterfeit consumption – the perception that counterfeit luxury consumption is a norm within members of their own generation.

The research is based on two survey-based studies: Study 1 investigates the phenomenon on young millennials (n = 438) and Gen X (n = 374) using moderation analyses in PROCESS Macro; and Study 2 is based on young millennials (n = 643) and runs a partial least squares structural equation modeling model.

The findings reveal that perceived counterfeit consumption within own (vs other) generation leads to greater counterfeit purchase intention and this effect is stronger for young millennials (vs Gen X). Counterfeiting values (materialism, counterconformity and morality) strengthen the impact of perceived peer counterfeit consumption on the counterfeit purchase intention of young millennials, thereby establishing counterfeit luxury consumption as a salient norm.

To modify perceptions about peer counterfeiting norms, normative messages must communicate counterfeit avoidance among millennials through social media influencers. Luxury brand managers must focus on the experiential value of luxury and pursue unconventional luxury inspired by a sense of rebelliousness and independence.

This work demonstrates that millennials engage in counterfeit luxury consumption when they perceive it as a salient consumption norm among members of their own generation. It adds a novel construct of perceived counterfeit consumption and demonstrates the role of generation as a normative referent. The article provides a values-based motivational account of conformity to peer counterfeiting norms.

The objective is to extend the concept of purse parties introduced by Gosline (2009) and to explore the phenomenon of counterfeit consumption through the in-home “purse parties” channel. The authors seek to reveal themes from the depth interviews and build a consumer typology reflecting attitudes toward purse parties and counterfeit luxury products.

The method is a qualitative phenomenological approach. Authors assessed attitudes toward purse party attendance and counterfeit goods – along with any subsequent behavioral intentions or behaviors. Authors addressed the objective using depth interviews among 28 women.

Findings included five emerging themes: distinctness of in-home consumption settings, obligatory attendance, social engagement, curiosity, and disregard for legalities of counterfeit consumption/disdain for purse parties.

The sample primarily consists of female colleges students and is not representative of all consumers. Due to social desirability bias and the controversial nature of counterfeit consumption, informants may have struggled to provide honest responses.

Research implications suggest potential increases in purse party events and consumption due to informant’s blatant disregard for the legalities of the practice, and interests in social engagement, intimacy (exclusivity), and curiosity.

The main contribution is a typology representing four types of purse party consumers: loyal, curious/social, skeptic, and disengaged. This proposed typology stems from the aforementioned themes uncovered. Further, authors identify the social implications of in-home purse parties and underscore the significance of an under-investigated purchase channel.

This paper aims to theorize counterfeit luxury consumption among millennials from a generational identity perspective.

The paper proposes and tests a model of counterfeit buying behavior using an online survey of 467 millennial respondents. The study uses multi-item measures from the extant literature and uses the structural equation modeling technique to test the proposed hypotheses.

The findings reveal when millennials have a self-defining relationship with their generation, they tend to internalize the generational norm pertaining to counterfeit luxury consumption. Millennials’ counterfeit related values: market mavenism, postmodernism, schadenfreude and public self-consciousness contribute to their generational identity. Moreover, market mavenism, cool consumption and public self-consciousness establish counterfeit luxury consumption as a generational norm.

The findings of this paper suggest that the expertise and influence of market mavens can be used to deter counterfeit consumption. Moreover, luxury brands must communicate a cool image to offset the rebellious image of counterfeits. Further, from a standardization versus adaption standpoint, the generational perspective allows for the standardization of anti-counterfeiting campaigns.

The paper makes a novel contribution to the counterfeiting literature by demonstrating that millennials pursue counterfeit luxury brands when they pledge cognitive allegiance to their generation. The paper, thus, extends the identity perspective of counterfeit luxury consumption to group contexts. The authors also test and validate the role of descriptive norms in group contexts by introducing the construct generational norm to counterfeiting literature.

This study explores consumers' motivations to purchase luxury and counterfeit products using an international sample. In addition, it also examines the moderating role of interpersonal influence on this process. This study seeks to examine if the consumers who demand the highest quality express a preference for luxury goods over counterfeit goods.

Survey research was employed to subjects from the USA, India, China and Russia. Responses from US and India consumers were collected using online software, whereas responses from China and Russia were collected with the help of a local market research firm.

The findings of the study indicate that consumers tend to show similar reactions based on the luxury and counterfeit consumption process examined here. In terms of interpersonal influence as a moderator, however, the study found it significantly impacts status seekers' attitude toward luxury and how a perfectionist shopper perceives counterfeit consumption.

This study is one of the first in the literature to empirically address both luxury and counterfeit consumption. Further it considers consumers from multiple countries with high levels of luxury good purchases.

The purpose of this paper is to examine customer attitudes toward purchasing counterfeit luxury products (ATPCLP) in two cities in two different countries (Saudi Arabia and Malaysia) by testing the relationships between the various reasons for purchasing those products: social status insecurity, status consumption and value consciousness.

Questionnaires were distributed conveniently to urban customers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Altogether 658 useable questionnaires were collected and analyzed using descriptive statistics, general linear model of univariate analysis of variance and structural equation modeling.

Quality, price, popularity and status signaling represent the main motivating factors for their brand choices of counterfeit luxury products among the two country groups of customers. As expected, customers' social status insecurity influences their ATPCLP, but not their status consumption. However, status consumption does positively moderates the relationship of their social status insecurity and their ATPCLP. Furthermore, customers' value consciousness influences their ATPCLP and moderates the relationship between status consumption and ATPCLP. The impact of status consumption on ATPCLP depends on the importance one places on the value of the products. However, the authors found no differences in social status insecurity, status consumption and value consciousness, on their ATPCLP among the customers. Some implications and limitations of the results are discussed.

The use of convenience sampling and mainly college students (in Saudi Arabia) as respondents represent the main limitations of this study.

The practical implication of this study is to discourage the purchasing of counterfeit luxury products in their respective country Malaysian marketers need to stress that their genuine products are of top quality while Saudi marketers need to stress that their genuine products are of well-known brands that are sourced from well-known countries of origin. Besides, Malaysian marketers need to offer genuine products that are not overly priced or ones that indicate value-for-money while Saudi marketers need to convey the message that their genuine products could help enhance or uplift their customers' social status. In this study, the authors did not find any support for differences in ATPCLP between the two rather different Muslim-majority countries. This could be due to the fact that the majority of the respondents were females in their mid-20s and that both countries have a growing number of young customer base, which makes them particularly attractive target customers for branded/luxury products and, at the same time, easy preys to luxury products counterfeiters. This implies that there are still more opportunities for academics to study the topic or related topics in the future.

As far as the authors know, no one has undertaken a comparative study involving two very different Islamic majority countries (more conservative mono-cultural and mono-ethnicity Saudi Arabia versus less conservative multicultural and multi-ethnicity Malaysia) before.

To provide a keener understanding of consumers’ decision-making processes and motivations regarding deliberate counterfeit consumption, this paper aims to integrate insights from several theoretical perspectives and the relevant literature. It proposes an overlooked yet important goal-directed interactionist perspective and identifies and tests a novel construct called consumers’ perceived counterfeit detection (PCD) in a proposed model.

This paper uses a comprehensive review of the literature to justify its proposed perspective, PCD construct and model, followed by in-depth interviews and survey data to test its proposed model and hypotheses.

Besides the theoretical insights derived from the proposed goal-directed interactionist perspective, empirical results demonstrate the important role that PCD plays in counterfeit consumption. In fact, PCD not only negatively and directly affects consumers’ intentions to deliberately purchase counterfeits but also weakens the positive effect consumers’ attitudes have on their purchase intentions.

This research makes several theoretical contributions. First and foremost, differing from other approaches (e.g. personal, economic and ethical), this research justifies an overlooked yet important goal-directed interactionist perspective and develops a refined and substantive framework including its proposed PCD construct. This framework provides opportunities to investigate behavior as an interpretative and dynamic process, vitalizing the domain of counterfeit-consumption behavior studies in particular and ethical behavior research in general. Second, at the construct level, the proposed hypothetical construct of PCD comprises the building blocks for knowledge advancement. Finally, rather than testing theories incrementally (such as the theory of planned behavior and the theory of reasoned action), this research fosters the development of new ideas regarding our proposed goal-directed interactionist perspective and PCD construct, which can be applied to other contexts and constructs that share the same or similar mechanisms and features.

According to the proposed goal-directed interactionist perspective, this research offers insights regarding why understanding consumers’ different goals (e.g. social-adjustive vs value-expressive; attainment vs maintenance) is important for marketers; how consumers’ goals interplay with their choices through their actions and consumption (e.g. compete vs substitute); and why, how and when their goals interact with their actions, choices and situations during their goal-setting, goal-striving and goal-realization stages that may lead to unethical behavior. At the construct level, the better marketers understand PCD, the more effectively they can use it. At the level of relationships and procedures, this research can offer important insights for businesses that look for “best practices” in the fight against deliberate counterfeit consumption.

First, by integrating insights from goal-directed behavior, self-regulatory theories and interactionist theory, this paper proposes its own goal-directed interactionist perspective. It then develops and tests a refined and substantive model of counterfeit decision-making in which PCD stands as a novel construct. The paper’s proposed perspective and model provide opportunities to investigate behavior as an interpretative and dynamic process, taking the domain of ethical behavior research (e.g. counterfeit-consumption behavior) from descriptive frameworks to testable theories.

Consumers’ motivations for purchasing counterfeit branded luxuries are a topic of heated discussion amongst academics and practitioners. Drawing on self-discrepancy theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of actual-ideal self-discrepancy on consumers’ attitudes towards counterfeit branded luxuries. It investigates how self-monitoring and perceived social risk moderate this effect. Furthermore, it explores cross-cultural differences in the impact of actual-ideal self-discrepancy.

A pilot study provides preliminary evidence that highlights the importance of actual-ideal self-discrepancy in counterfeit consumption. Based upon a large-scale survey across Hong Kong, the USA and Australia, the principal study explores the moderating effect of self-monitoring and perceived social risk as well as cross-cultural differences.

The results indicate that self-discrepancy increases consumers’ tendency to engage in symbolic consumption, and that consumption of counterfeit branded luxuries can serve the social function of self-expression to reduce the discomfort induced by self-discrepancy. Self-monitoring and perceived social risk have significant moderating effects, with the former strengthening and the latter attenuating this effect. Moreover, the effect of self-discrepancy is more pronounced amongst individualistic consumers than collectivistic consumers.

This is the first study to highlight the significance of self-discrepancy in the consumption of counterfeit branded luxuries. It examines the important moderating effects of self-monitoring and perceived social risk. Consumers from collectivistic and individualistic cultures define their self-concept differently, thus the findings provide meaningful cross-cultural information on the impact of self-discrepancy in counterfeit consumption.

The study's objective is to examine the consumers' intention to buy counterfeit brand shoes. A conceptual model is developed to test the risk-taking and word-of-mouth (WOM) as a moderator in the relationship between status consumption, brand image, and consumer intention to buy counterfeit shoes.

Based on the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and signaling theory (ST), this research was conducted in the Indian National Capital Region. Using a structured instrument, the data was collected from 240 respondents. After checking the psychometric properties of the survey instrument using the Lisrel package of structural equation modeling, Hayes's PROCESS macros were used for testing the hypotheses.

The findings from the study indicate that (1) status consumption and brand image are positively associated with purchase intention of counterfeit brand shoes, and (2) risk-taking moderates the relationship between (1) status consumption and purchase intention, and (2) brand image and purchase intension, (3) significant three-way interaction between WOM, risk-taking and status consumption on purchase intention, and (4) significant three-way interaction between brand image, WOM, and risk-taking on purchase intention of counterfeit brand shoes.

As with any survey research, this study has common method variance as a potential problem. However, through the latent variable method and Harman's single-factor analysis, the common method variance was checked. The study has several implications for managers, e-marketers, and consumers.

The study has several implications for marketers selling counterfeit products and managers intending to protect their branded products.

A conceptual model showing two-way and three-way interactions between status consumption, risk-taking, and WOM influencing the consumer purchase intention of counterfeit products was discussed. This is the first of its kind in India to explore such relationships.

The purpose of this study is to describe the effect of religiosity on luxury and counterfeit purchase intentions and to determine the role of consumer ethics in the context of counterfeit purchase intention. The conceptual framework is based on Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). In the context of counterfeit consumption, religiosity is proposed to be an added component to the theory, while ethical consumption is proposed to mediate the relationship between religiosity and counterfeit purchase intention. In the context of luxury consumption, religiosity is proposed to precede TPB components which then affect luxury purchase intention.

This is a descriptive study; this study uses a mixed-methods approach, where eight semi-structured in-depth interviews and 500 surveys were conducted and distributed to Egyptian luxury consumers.

The major results suggest that religiosity and ethical consumption negatively affect counterfeit purchase intention as proposed. The results also reveal that religiosity did not necessitate a negative attitude toward luxury consumption. Religiosity was found to have a positive effect on attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. Only subjective norms had significant effect on luxury purchase intention in the research context.

This paper contributes to the TPB by adding religiosity to the theory components as well as integrating the theory of planned behavior with Consumer’s Ethics theory in the context of counterfeit consumption. The study is an attempt to compare between luxury and counterfeit purchase intention while considering the role of individual’s religiosity in these purchases.

The purpose of this paper is to create a framework for broadly understanding categories and motivations behind purchasing different counterfeit products.

Focus groups provided qualitative data from 509 counterfeit purchases incidents by 95 informants.

The most frequently mentioned motivation was the utility (35 percent) received from the good over the genuine article. The second, but negative, motivation was the perceived risk involved in the purchase (22 percent), whether it is physical or social risk. Social norms, confusion, and ethical concerns each represented about 10 percent of the motivations toward the purchase of counterfeit items. The least mentioned motivations to purchase, at less than 4 percent each, were culture, habit, and desire to explore. These factors were evident across a variety of 15 product categories, headed by electronics, such as DVDs and computer software.

Through targeting negative motivations, such as perceived physical and social risks, businesses can devise strategies from a demand side perspective to overcome the problem of counterfeit consumption.

Qualitative responses, over many product categories, provide a unique overview to the perception of counterfeit consumption. The finding that consumer ethics may depend on whether the activity benefits the society as a whole is worthy of additional discussion. The authors learn that when consumers thought their counterfeit consumption caused little or no harm, they do not see much ethical concern in their actions.