Here comes summer. Soon, tourists will descend on New York for the time of their lives. The shows! The dining! The street vendors hawking fake Louis Vuitton handbags!
Needless to say, the appeal of that last attraction perplexes many marketers of luxury goods. Why do women flock to buy worthless knockoffs? Is there any way to stem this tide? Perhaps a recent study can offer some insights.
One experiment focused on buyer attitudes that serve two distinct "social functions":
- Social-adjustive ("This will help me fit in.")
- Value-expressive ("This will help me stand out.")
The researchers showed two different images of a "fake" Louis Vuitton handbag to two randomly chosen groups of women. One group saw the bag with a conspicuous logo, and the other saw the bag without it. The women then answered a questionnaire that classified their attitudes and their willingness to buy the fake.
Results showed that those subjects classified as "social-adjustive" were the most likely to buy the fake bag, especially when it had a conspicuous logo. The appeal of seeming to fit in with an elite group was strong enough to make these shoppers risk buying the flashy fake.
The researchers' advice to luxury marketers? Try putting a moral to your next story. Tout the in-crowd status of owning the real luxury item, but depict the shame of being discovered with an illicit knockoff.
The Po!nt: Make it real. Marketers might protect their luxury originals by stressing the social consequences of being seen with a cheap imitation.
Source: "Why Do Consumers Buy Counterfeit Luxury Brands?" by Keith Wilcox, Hyeong Min Kim and Sankar Sen. Journal of Marketing Research, 2009.
by Christina "CK" Kerley
Comments
by A Mehta Thu May 14, 2009
If the counterfeit product looks genuine, then all that matters is who is carrying it. A person known to be wealthy can buy fake products and appear to be wearing or carrying original brand name items.. and a relatively low income person carrying an original brand name product may appear to have a fake.. in many cases the impression is already there.. (Not that I endorse buying fake :-)