Counterfeit Products

1.0 Introduction

1.1 Background:

Counterfeiting is an expanding field of business in which duplicates or copies that are identical to the actual goods, including their packaging, trademarks, and labeling, are bought and sold (Kay 1990, cited in Ang et al.2001, p. 219). The market of counterfeit products has its roots since 1970s when Levi’s Strauss found its logo on the unbranded jeans being sold to Asian markets (Walker 1981,cited in Phau et al. 2009, p.262-281). Since then, the selling of counterfeit products has become a flaunting business which is creating both problems and opportunities for new and existing sellers. There are numerous countries where counterfeit products with duplicate designs are commonly available and it is creating problems for original brand sellers to maintain exclusivity.

The availability and demand for counterfeit products has increased by more than 12 percent each year for the last decade (Chaudhry et al. 2009a, b). The consequences of this phenomenon result in heavy losses to the actual brand, in terms of the loss of brand reputation and goodwill, and decreased customer confidence and brand equity and also include job losses, tax avoidance and lost sales for company. The estimates by The International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition show that counterfeiting is responsible for US$200 billion a year in lost jobs, unpaid taxes and lost sales (Furnham and Valgeirsson 2007). Moreover, the success of this market lies in the considerable percentage of consumers demanding the counterfeited products. As per a research the biggest buyer of these products around the world lies in 18-25 year age bracket (Phau and Teah 2009). According to another research, about one-third of the group interviewed responded th...

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...0 2011].

• The Economist Pakistan. 2011. 50 percent of the products in Pakistan are substandard, adulterated or counterfeit [online] Available from: http://www.economistpakistan.com/Page-Detail.php?id=485 [Accessed August 20 2011].

• Thurasamy, R., Mohamad, O., Jantan, M., Lee Wai Chow, J. and Nasirin, S. 2003. Counterfeit Music CDs: Social and Personality Influences, Demographics, Attitudes and Purchase Intention: Some Insights from Malaysia. The Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on Research Methods in Business and Management [online].Available from: http://www.ramayah.com/journalarticlespdf/counterfeitmusic.pdf [Accessed Sept 20 2011].

• U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.2011 [online] pp.1-20. Available from: http://www.ice.gov/doclib/news/releases/2011/110316washington.pdf [Accessed August 20 2011].