Turns out that counterfeit luxury goods don’t make the person but may well inspire them to purchase the genuine item in a couple of years, according to research by Renee Richardson Gosline, an assistant professor of marketing at MIT's Sloan School of Management.
Gosline’s research supports the view of the brand environment, a term we use at Sagacite to describe the authentication of brands by their context. “People are more likely to identify a designer handbag as authentic if the individual carrying it wears expensive clothes or has a certain aura that says rich person, the research found,” BusinessWeek reported on the research.
"Counterfeits are really not serving as a substitute for the real thing at all," Gosline, a former brand manager for LVMH Moet Hennessey Louis Vuitton, told BusinessWeek. "Consumers are a lot smarter than we may give them credit for—just because you've got a nice fake doesn't mean you're going to get away with it."
However, the research also revealed that fake was often a precursor to the real thing and that 46% of the counterfeit-bag owners bought the authentic products within two and a half years
"The counterfeit actually served as a placebo for brand attachment," Gosline told the business magazine. "People were becoming increasingly attached to the real brand even though they never possessed it at all."
It's interesting that consumers who purchase fake luxury goods are aspirational towards the real brand. This is similar to consumers buying a low fat version of a product. They actually want the real product.
Posted by: Carol L. Weinfeld | December 13, 2009 at 09:35 AM