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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.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pricing strategies of me‐too brands.

This research estimates an empirical model using a panel data of 20 consumer packaged goods sub‐categories.

Me‐too brands face pricing constraints that restrict them from pricing aggressively versus the feature pioneer. The results show that private label brands have the most flexibility to price aggressively. Line extensions me‐toos and new brand name me‐toos do not cut price. Line extensions of national brands are constrained by their parent brand's prices. New brand names are constrained by the higher costs of launching a new brand name. Thus, it appears that consistent product line pricing and covering the costs of launching a new brand name limit price competition versus the feature pioneer.

This research is limited by the lack of distribution data, the lack of customer mind‐set measures of brand equity, and the limited number of private label me‐toos in the sample.

Feature pioneers need not worry about price cutting from line extension and new brand name me‐toos. They can set prices to cover their development costs and meet their strategic goals. Without the ability to undercut the feature pioneer, me‐too brands need to utilize other marketing tools to compensate for delayed entry.

Conventional wisdom suggests a me‐too brand succeeds if it charges a low price as low prices are essential to obtain trial. This paper provides empirical evidence that certain types of me‐too brands are restricted from aggressive price cutting.

Copycat brands offering improved product quality pose serious challenges to original brands. This paper aims to provide a better understanding of why consumers prefer copycat brands with superior product attributes and how original brands can shift this preference back by strategically leveraging brand identity cues.

Four experimental studies test different types of brand identity cues that original brands can use to influence consumer preferences. Logistic and linear regression analyses analyze the effects.

The results systematically show the power of brand identity cues in helping original brands reduce share loss to copycat brands using superior product attributes. They also reveal the role of brand equity, conspicuous consumption and consumers’ tendency of using brands as status symbols in enhancing the effect of brand identity cues in the face of superior copycats.

This paper extends cue diagnosticity theory and the brand identity literature by showing the power of brand identity cues in predicting consumer choices of original brands.

This paper provides useful guidelines for managers of original brands on how to effectively use brand identity cues to compete against copycats.

Prior research focuses on how copycat brands’ characteristics influence consumers’ evaluations of copycats. These studies are limited, however, by their focus on cheap and low-quality copycats. The current paper examines the effects of brand identity cues and draws attention to the trade-offs consumers make when choosing between original brands and copycats offering superior product features.

We examine how the organizational identity of established firms affects their strategic outcomes during the emergence phase of a new market. Drawing on cognitive theories of analogical learning, we build theory about how the established identities of producers influence the fluency with which consumers make sense of novel products, and hence affect valuations. We illustrate this theory through an empirical study of consumer evaluations of de alio entrants during the emergence of the digital camera industry.

The present study fills some of the void in the literature on the concept and phenomenon of innovation and imitation. Basing our arguments on features that the literature indicates are characteristics of innovation, we delimit the concepts of innovation and imitation. Using these features and considering a company’s degree of entrepreneurial and market orientation, we devise a typology of companies ranging from radical innovators to strict imitators. We also argue that some key factors and the choice of appropriate strategy determine whether innovative and imitative companies can obtain and maintain their sustainable competitive advantages.

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.

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.

Shadow organizing refers to the emergence of parallel arrangements that sit alongside and imitate mainstream or conventional ways of organizing. It can be a response to challenges that require new ways of working without abandoning what is valuable about conventional arrangements. However, the processes through which shadow organizing is accomplished are not well understood; there is a need to go beyond traditional notions of mimicry and metaphor. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper demonstrates how a Tardean approach to imitation can address this gap. It deploys imitation as an explanatory concept, based on contemporary readings of Tarde, as well as understandings of organizing as an unfolding process. Child and Family Centres in Tasmania (Australia), are used as an example of shadow organizing, delivering integrated health and education services in an emerging parallel arrangement.

The analysis highlights an imitation dynamic which is far from straightforward mimicry. Rather, it comprises repetition and generation of difference. This dynamic is conceptualized in Tardean fashion as three patterns: the imitation of ideas before expression; the selective nature of imitation; and insertion of the old alongside the new.

The paper moves beyond metaphors of shadow organizing, and understandings of shadow organizing as mimicry. Conceptualizing imitation in an alternative way, it contributes fresh insights into how shadow organizing is accomplished. This enriches and expands the conceptual apparatus for researchers wishing to understand the betwixt and between of shadow organizing.

Suggested tag was considered as one of the critical factors affecting a user’s tagging behaviour. However, compared to the findings on the suggested tags for the monolingual environment, it still lacks focused studies on the tag suggestions for cross-language information. Therefore, this paper aims to concern with annotation behaviour and psychological cognition in the cross-language environment when suggested tags are provided.

A cross-language tagging experiment was conducted to explore the impact of suggested tags on the tagging results and process. The descriptive statistics of tags, the sources and semantic relations of tags, as well as the user’s psychological cognition were all measured in the test.

The experimental results demonstrated that the multilingual suggested tags could bring some costs to a user’s tagging perception. Furthermore, the language factor of suggested tags led to different paths of tagging imitation (reflected by longer semantic mapping and imitation at the visual level) and different cognitive processes (topic extraction and inference process).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to emphasize the effect of suggested tags during multilingual tagging. The findings will enrich the theories of user-information interaction in the cross-language environment and, in turn, provide practical implications for tag-based information system design.

The authors attempt to answer the basic questions: How is imitation tied to innovation? This question is addressed in the context of China's innovation system in the 2000s where Chinese industrial firms simultaneously implement innovation and imitation strategies in their new product developments.

The authors first build on lattice theory and supermodularity theory to provide a rigorous and careful mathematical proof. The authors further conduct the empirical analyses using an original data on Chinese manufacturing firms' innovation and imitation strategies in the development of new products in 2002.

This article reveals the complementarity relation between imitation and innovation strategies and identifies external knowledge search as the boundary condition that influences the extent to which two strategies reinforce each other.

The findings of the imitation-innovation complementarity suggest that imitation is not only an indispensable strategy independent of innovation, but also is vital to the effectiveness of innovation itself.

The imitation-innovation complementarity finding provides some evidence for the contention that Chinese latecomers exploit the synergies of imitation and innovation, transforming themselves from imitators to innovators and vibrant competitors in the global market (Wu et al., 2016) and, as a result, national innovation system has evolved from a state-sponsored imitation program to the imitation-innovation mixture.

In contrast to earlier innovation studies in which innovation and imitation are unrelated, this study reveals that imitation complements innovation, and the extent of Chinese firms' external knowledge search affects the complementary relationship between imitation and innovation. These findings add important insights to the innovation management literature and contribute empirical evidence to the interplay of innovation and imitation enhancing national innovation system.