It is counterfeits that consumers love?! Exploring the phenomenon in the digital environment

The Internet has revolutionized the way consumers shop: available 24/7 from any location worldwide through different devices, the web represents a global distribution channel (Miniwatts Marketing Group 2013). However, what pertains to the rightful distribution of goods also holds true for selling counterfeits, i.e., products that violate others’ Intellectual Property Rights (mainly trademarks and copyright) (MarkMonitor 2013). The fact that consumers can access counterfeits with a simple mouse click has dramatically aggravated already rampant offline purchases of fakes (Guarnieri and Przyswa 2013; Radón 2012). Prior findings (Davenport Lyons and Ledbury Research 2007) show that almost one third of UK consumers has now deliberately turned to the web for their counterfeit purchases. This is where the present contribution sets in: while the demand for counterfeits in an offline context is already well researched (see e.g., Eisend and Schuchert-Güler 2006), purchasing fakes online has attracted only scant research attention. This seems surprising with regard to the extent of counterfeits being sold online, but also given the fact that buying fakes on the Internet poses additional challenges to the consumer. Quite commonly, consumers become victims of deceptive counterfeiting, as they initially believed to buy an original (bargain), and only found out after receiving the shipment that they had been fooled with a counterfeit (Wall and Large 2010). Based on 30 qualitative interviews, (1) we aim to shed light on the purchase behavior of counterfeits online (e.g., awareness and knowledge; drivers and obstacles of purchasing fakes online); this allows us to (2) evaluate potential communalities and differences between offline and online purchase and based on that to (3) develop avenues for future research.