A world of counterfeits: Knowledge to decide

Abstract

Counterfeiting has become a major social problem because of the consequences for consumers, businesses and governments. The objective is to describe the current state of counterfeiting research, define the main thematic areas, identify gaps and highlight key findings. A bibliometric analysis of the growing number of publications addressing the counterfeiting problem in the existing literature is conducted. The articles are taken from a search of the Scopus database. After excluding some scientific‐technological subareas, 1984 papers are analyzed, to which 23 outstanding papers were added at a later stage. In more recent years, most of the articles focus on the development of technologies. Four conceptual areas have been identified: technological development, social behavior, economic aspects and legal aspects. The latter two are the least studied. Also identified in the social area are two topics of interest that have been little addressed, namely, the effect of prior purchase experience and the development of theories describing consumer behavior towards counterfeits. The value derived from this research is the identification of new lines of research with the economic and legal area, it would be of interest to initiate a research program that studies what proportion of counterfeits are sanctioned, to which interest group the sanction is directed and if the sanction is proportional to the damage caused to society and the company. In addition, with regard to the study of counterfeit consumer behaviour, its development can provide information to guide the definition of public awareness strategies and help to adapt companies' marketing campaigns.