PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Perceptions of counterfeits among luxury goods differ across cultures

2021-07-06
(Press-News.org) ABINGTON, Pa. -- Counterfeit dominance decreases Anglo-American, but not Asian, consumers' quality perception and purchase intention of authentic brands, according to a team of researchers.

"Counterfeit dominance is the perception that counterfeit products possess more than 50% of market share," Lei Song, assistant professor of marketing at Penn State Abington, said. "Counterfeit dominance is a phenomenon especially concerning for the luxury fashion industry as counterfeit luxury fashion brands account for 60% to 70% of the $4.5 trillion in total counterfeit trade and one-quarter of total sales in luxury fashion goods."

Lei and his team conducted four behavioral experiments with 149 participants on Mturk to test their hypotheses.

The results show that counterfeit dominance negatively affects the quality perception of authentic luxury fashion brands for Anglo-American, but not for Asian, consumers.

The study finds that Anglo-Americans are weaker in social-adjustive attitude, meaning that they are more likely to rely on outgroups such as people on the street to form their opinions. This is the reason for the unveiled cultural difference in perceived quality and purchase intention.

"Being aware of counterfeit dominance raises brand owners' concern that outgroups may consider their authentic brands as low-quality counterfeits, thus lowering their quality perception of authentic brands," Song said.

This research demonstrates that counterfeit dominance negatively affects the perceived quality and purchase intention of luxury fashion brands across product categories for Anglo-American, but not for Asian, consumers with a social-adjustive attitude underlying this difference. Therefore, counterfeit dominance has stronger negative impacts on luxury fashion brand owners' perceptions of their brands for those with a weak (Anglo-Americans), but not for those with a strong (Asians), social-adjustive attitude.

The team found that Asian consumers are stronger in social-adjustive attitude, suggesting that they are more likely to form opinions based on ingroups, such as friends, rather than outgroups. As a result, Asian brand owners' quality perception of authentic brands was less affected by counterfeit dominance.

Because quality perception strongly affects purchase intention, Song said the researchers also found that counterfeit dominance negatively affects the purchase intention of authentic luxury fashion brands for Anglo-American, but not for Asian, consumers.

To examine whether social-adjustive attitude is indeed the reason behind the unveiled cultural difference, the authors included a study about the moderating role of social-adjustive attitude. They found that the impact of counterfeit dominance on purchase intention was marginally significant among participants with a low social-adjustive attitude, but not for those with a high social-adjustive attitude towards luxury fashion brands. This suggests that a social-adjustive attitude underlies the effect of counterfeit dominance on different cultural groups' luxury fashion brand owners' purchase intention.

Counterfeit dominance effects spill over to other product categories of the same brand. The studies not only found that counterfeit dominance affects quality perception and purchase intention for the same product category -- for example, counterfeit Burberry sunglasses affect authentic Burberry sunglasses -- but also for a different product category of the same brand -- for example, counterfeit Burberry sunglasses affect authentic Burberry scarves. This indicates that the detrimental effect of counterfeit dominance in the Anglo-American culture is exponential.

The researchers made several recommendations to support luxury goods producers including reducing news of counterfeit dominance in Anglo-American culture and adopting word of mouth in Asian culture. Previous research indicates that acknowledgment of counterfeit dominance is more adverse for Anglo-American than Asian fashion brand owners.

"Luxury fashion brand manufacturers should collaborate with news and social media websites to reduce the amount of information related to counterfeiting of their luxury fashion brands and cooperate with government agencies to prevent counterfeit dominance in the Anglo-American culture. However, because Asian brand owners' perceptions of luxury fashion brands are strongly affected by their peers, luxury fashion brand manufacturers should focus increasingly on strategies such as word of mouth to influence these consumers' peers to augment the purchase of those brands," Song said.

"Thus, luxury fashion brand managers should segment their consumers by culture and develop different marketing strategies to remedy the loss of sales from counterfeit dominance," he continued.

Another area would be to focus on enhancing the quality of luxury products in Anglo-American culture and providing group discounts in Asian culture. Group discounts or buying refers to offering products and services at significantly reduced prices on the condition that a minimum number of buyers would make the purchase.

According to the researchers, luxury fashion brand manufacturers should deploy strategies such as creating advertisements that specifically focus on quality to maintain customers with an Anglo-American cultural identity. However, for customers with an Asian cultural background, providing a group discount may increase influence from these consumers' peers to purchase luxury fashion brands.

INFORMATION:

Song's co-authors on the study include Yan Meng, assistant professor of marketing, Grenoble Ecole de Management; Hua Chang, assistant professor of marketing, Towson University; Wenjing Li, assistant professor of marketing, Stephen F. Austin State University; and Kang "Frank" Tan, chair, ACIP Technology Ltd. Co.

Their research was published in the paper "How Counterfeit Dominance Affects Luxury Fashion Brand Owners' Perceptions: A Cross-Cultural Examination" in the Journal of Business Research.



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

How racial wage discrimination of football players ended in England

2021-07-06
Increased labour mobility seems to have stopped the racial wage discrimination of black English football players. A new study in economics from Stockholm university and Université Paris-Saclay used data from the English Premier League to investigate the impact of the so-called "Bosman ruling", and found that racial discrimination against English football players disappeared - but not for non-EU players. The study was recently published in the journal European Economic Review. In 1995, the so-called Bosman ruling turned the labour market for European footballers upside down, introducing a free transfer ...

Patently harmful: Fewer female inventors a problem for women's health

2021-07-06
Necessity is the father of invention, but where is its mother? According to a new study published in Science, fewer women hold biomedical patents, leading to a reduced number of patented technologies designed to address problems affecting women. While there are well-known biases that limit the number of women in science and technology, the consequences extend beyond the gender gap in the labour market, say researchers from McGill University, Harvard Business School, and the Universidad de Navarra in Barcelona. Demographic inequities in who gets to invent lead to demographic inequities in who benefits from invention. "Although the percentage of biomedical patents held by women has risen from 6.3% to 16.2% over the last three decades, ...

Communication: A key tool for citizen participation in science

2021-07-06
Researchers from Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain) have analysed the way citizen science is practised in Spain. The paper, produced by Carolina Llorente and Gema Revuelta, from UPF's Science, Communication and Society Studies Centre (CCS-UPF) and Mar Carrió, from the University's Health Sciences Educational Research Group (GRECS), has been published in the Journal of Science Communication (JCOM). Based on the study, a series of recommendations have been put forward to improve how citizen participation in science is carried out. Firstly, they suggest efforts be stepped up regarding the training given for assessing these initiatives or the creation of multi-disciplinary teams with a broad range of ...

Research brief: New fossil sheds light on the evolution of how dinosaurs breathed

2021-07-06
Using an exceptionally preserved fossil from South Africa, a particle accelerator, and high-powered x-rays, an international team including a University of Minnesota researcher has discovered that not all dinosaurs breathed in the same way. The findings give scientists more insight into how a major group of dinosaurs, including well-known creatures like the triceratops and stegosaurus, evolved. The study is published in eLife, a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal for the biomedical and life sciences. Not all animals use the same techniques and organs to breathe. Humans expand and contract their ...

Worms learn how to optimize foraging by switching their response to social cues

Worms learn how to optimize foraging by switching their response to social cues
2021-07-06
Researchers have shown how worms learn to optimise their foraging activity by switching their response to pheromones in the environment, according to a report published today in eLife. The findings are an important advance in the field of animal behaviour, providing new insights on how sensory cues are integrated to facilitate foraging and navigation. Foraging food is one of the most critical yet challenging activities for animals, with food often patchily distributed and other animals trying to find and consume the same resources. An important consideration is how long to stay and exploit a food patch before moving on to find another. Leaving incurs the cost ...

Synthetic biology circuits can respond within seconds

2021-07-06
Synthetic biology offers a way to engineer cells to perform novel functions, such as glowing with fluorescent light when they detect a certain chemical. Usually, this is done by altering cells so they express genes that can be triggered by a certain input. However, there is often a long lag time between an event such as detecting a molecule and the resulting output, because of the time required for cells to transcribe and translate the necessary genes. MIT synthetic biologists have now developed an alternative approach to designing such circuits, which relies exclusively ...

To understand ecology, follow the connections

To understand ecology, follow the connections
2021-07-06
AMHERST, Mass. - City sprawl and road development is increasingly fragmenting the habitats that many plant and animal species need to survive. Ecologists have long known than sustainable development requires attention to ecological connectivity - the ability to keep plant and wildlife populations intact and healthy, typically by preserving large tracts of land or creating habitat corridors for animals. New research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst argues that it's not enough for ecological modelling to focus on the landscape. If we want the best-possible ecological management, we should consider ...

Lab analysis finds near-meat and meat not nutritionally equivalent

2021-07-06
DURHAM, N.C. -- Plant-based meat substitutes taste and chew remarkably similar to real beef, and the 13 items listed on their nutrition labels - vitamins, fats and protein -- make them seem essentially equivalent. But a Duke University research team's deeper examination of the nutritional content of plant-based meat alternatives, using a sophisticated tool of the science known as 'metabolomics,' shows they're as different as plants and animals. Meat-substitute manufacturers have gone to great lengths to make the plant-based product as meaty as possible, including adding leghemoglobin, an iron-carrying molecule from soy, and red beet, ...

New study pinpoints two separate mutation near GDF5 gene for osteoarthritis, hip dysplasia

2021-07-06
Terence D. Capellini has been interested in how joints work for almost three decades. Part of it is due to personal experience, having sustained several joint injuries as a college ice hockey player and recently developing knee osteoarthritis. But the principal investigator of Harvard's Developmental and Evolutionary Genetics Lab has also seen the pain and limited mobility of loved ones who've received similar diagnoses and injuries. "We have all these joints in the body and they don't look the same from one another," said Capellini, the Richard B. Wolf Associate Professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary ...

Melanoma registry results shine light on rare pediatric cancer

Melanoma registry results shine light on rare pediatric cancer
2021-07-06
Pediatric melanoma is a rare disease with only around 400 cases diagnosed in the United States every year. To better understand this disease and how best to treat it, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists created a registry called Molecular Analysis of Childhood MELanocytic Tumors (MACMEL). A paper on findings from the registry was published today in Cancer. "What is different about the MACMEL registry is that it is prospective," said corresponding author Alberto Pappo, M.D., St. Jude Solid Tumor Division director. "We're seeing the vast majority of enrolled patients as part of the melanoma clinic at St. Jude. We can follow these patients and conduct detailed pathology and molecular analysis." More ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Reality check: making indoor smartphone-based augmented reality work

Overthinking what you said? It’s your ‘lizard brain’ talking to newer, advanced parts of your brain

Black men — including transit workers — are targets for aggression on public transportation, study shows

Troubling spike in severe pregnancy-related complications for all ages in Illinois

Alcohol use identified by UTHealth Houston researchers as most common predictor of escalated cannabis vaping among youths in Texas

Need a landing pad for helicopter parenting? Frame tasks as learning

New MUSC Hollings Cancer Center research shows how Golgi stress affects T-cells' tumor-fighting ability

#16to365: New resources for year-round activism to end gender-based violence and strengthen bodily autonomy for all

Earliest fish-trapping facility in Central America discovered in Maya lowlands

São Paulo to host School on Disordered Systems

New insights into sleep uncover key mechanisms related to cognitive function

USC announces strategic collaboration with Autobahn Labs to accelerate drug discovery

Detroit health professionals urge the community to act and address the dangers of antimicrobial resistance

3D-printing advance mitigates three defects simultaneously for failure-free metal parts 

Ancient hot water on Mars points to habitable past: Curtin study

In Patagonia, more snow could protect glaciers from melt — but only if we curb greenhouse gas emissions soon

Simplicity is key to understanding and achieving goals

Caste differentiation in ants

Nutrition that aligns with guidelines during pregnancy may be associated with better infant growth outcomes, NIH study finds

New technology points to unexpected uses for snoRNA

Racial and ethnic variation in survival in early-onset colorectal cancer

Disparities by race and urbanicity in online health care facility reviews

Exploring factors affecting workers' acquisition of exercise habits using machine learning approaches

Nano-patterned copper oxide sensor for ultra-low hydrogen detection

Maintaining bridge safer; Digital sensing-based monitoring system

A novel approach for the composition design of high-entropy fluorite oxides with low thermal conductivity

A groundbreaking new approach to treating chronic abdominal pain

ECOG-ACRIN appoints seven researchers to scientific committee leadership positions

New model of neuronal circuit provides insight on eye movement

Cooking up a breakthrough: Penn engineers refine lipid nanoparticles for better mRNA therapies

[Press-News.org] Perceptions of counterfeits among luxury goods differ across cultures