The Role of Hope and Attitude in Luxury Counterfeit Purchase Intention

Resumo

Although originated in categories such as apparel and luxury accessories, counterfeiting now affects a wide range of industries, representing a major economic threat. This great amount of counterfeit trade worldwide is shocking, and lead us to argue: what are the factors that influence the intention to purchase these products, especially regarding the consumption of luxury counterfeit brands? We believe that emotion may represent an important role in people’s intention to purchase counterfeit goods. Besides, the attitude towards counterfeit goods may also imply variations of intention to purchase, playing a moderator role. Thus, this study aims to investigate the emotion hope for social status and attitude towards counterfeit goods as predictors of consumers’ intention to purchase counterfeit products. We conduct an experiment with 45 undergraduates (51% female) from different universities, which design was a 2 (hope for social status; hopeful vs non-hope) x 2 (attitude towards counterfeit goods; positive vs negative) full factorial, between-subjects. Results confirmed that people felt hopeful after manipulation; however, future steps of this investigation should consider the use of another instrument of manipulation even more effective. Limitations of sample size do not allow statistical analysis of data.