Forget the Areal@ thingbtake the Copy! an Explanatory Model For the Volitional Purchase of Counterfeit Products

Abstract

As the supply with fake products has been growing dramatically across the globe, manufacturers of the original products and governments find themselves in a constant battle against counterfeiters. While the supply side has attracted considerable attention of researchers, the knowledge on what drives customers to buy the fake rather than the original remains still far from consolidated. Based on a sample of 1040 respondents, this study uses the Theory of Planned Behavior to systematize past findings in the field and comes up with a model explaining key drivers of the demand for counterfeits.