Counterfeit Impact on High-end Luxury Products: investigating French Generation Z Consumers’ Attitude towards High-end Luxury Counterfeit Products and Purchasing Intention.

Abstract

The phenomenon of counterfeiting continues to spread more and more around the world every day. As a result, the resulting problems continue to affect luxury brands and damage their image. Nevertheless, only lately has the issue of counterfeiting in this sector received serious thought and that studies have really begun on this subject. The goal of this empirical study is to determine in which degree French Generation Z consumers intend to purchase counterfeit luxury products. For this purpose, the author tested the research framework by conducting a quantitative survey in form of questionnaire where questions were asked. Thus, this questionnaire was answered by 101 individuals. Moreover, in order to collect relevant data, a mono-method method has been used. The results showed that there was a correlation between conformity and counterfeit purchase attitudes and of revenue consciousness on counterfeit purchase intention. Indeed, the variable “Conformity” has a significance level of 0.017 and when this variable goes up of 1 point on its scale, the counterfeit purchase attitudes go up of 0.0112 on average. The higher the degree of conformity of a consumer, the higher his attitudes towards counterfeit purchases. Similarly, the higher the level of revenue consciousness, the higher the intention to purchase counterfeit products. For instance, the variable “Revenue Consciousness” significance level is 0,001 which means that when it goes up of 1 point, the variable counterfeit purchase intention goes up of 0,412 on average. For future research, it would be interesting to study a larger and more diverse panel of participants as well as to broaden citizenship by not limiting it to French citizens. This might enable us to see my first findings and gain a better understanding of the expectations and driving forces behind consumers' decisions to buy counterfeit goods.