Counterfeits or Shanzhai? The Role of Face and Brand Consciousness in Luxury Copycat Consumption

Abstract

This study responds to the emergence of the Shanzhai phenomenon in the international marketplace and introduces the Shanzhai phenomenon into the consumer behavior literature by defining it and comparing it with well-known concepts like luxury counterfeits. More specifically, it examines how consumers' face and brand consciousness influence their willingness to buy luxury counterfeits rather than Shanzhai products. The results show that consumers who are more face conscious are more likely to choose luxury counterfeits than Shanzhai products. In addition, consumers' face consciousness elicits a high concern for well-known brands, which also in turn leads to a more favorable attitude toward luxury counterfeits than Shanzhai products. These findings enable researchers to better understand consumers' responses toward both Shanzhai and counterfeit products and help companies that are protecting their original brands to tailor their consumer-directed measures more effectively.

Analysis of the Influence of Brand Consciousness, Materialism, Social Comparison, Fashion Innovativeness, and Fashion Involvement on Attitude Towards Purchasing Luxury Fashion Goods and Repurchase Intention of Luxury Fashion Goods Furla Customers in Surabaya

“…According to Jiang and Shan (2016), brand consciousness or brand awareness refers to the psychological orientation of brand names experienced by consumers when they are in a process before making a purchase. According to Siddique and Rashidi (2015), brand consciousness does not only include knowledge about a brand or choosing a brand among other brands, but also about the value of the brand itself, where the brand has an image, quality, and attributes that can distinguished from other brands.…”

Co-opting the nation brand: The politics of cross-cultural co-production

“…However, despite these exemplary modes of innovation, there is always an element of complicity in shanzhai practices, particularly as mimicry tends to simultaneously reinforce the desires associated with the original through the expansion of a variety of familiar imagery and iconography, even as certain counter-narratives are heaped onto these symbols through these replicas. Even as these clever doubles expand upon the capabilities of their original, shanzhai practices exist in order for the working class to engage in various forms of brand consciousness (Jiang and Shan, 2016). These ambivalent tensions between resistance and complicity, subversion and reinforcement, continue to be a common thread in many shanzhai practices, as this phenomenon extends beyond consumer products into journalism, ICT development, media and celebrity cultures, and more (Chubb, 2015).…”

“…It is this flexible acceptance of various gaps and the ability to innovate within these margins that allows for more effective products to emerge that respond to the desires of local communities. While the familiar branding of the product may aid in catching the eye of a consumer, those who purchase shanzhai products ultimately do so for the functional features, as opposed to the brand name (Jiang and Shan, 2016). However, as noted previously, shanzhai remains a contentious practice, and not one that is uniformly accepted as a mode of production that yields quality products or sustainable innovation.…”

“…This practice extends deeply into China’s media landscape and ICT development, and has become a phenomenon that can be perceived as an alternative form of innovation that subverts the more Westernized understanding of innovation as perpetual novelty, stemming from a distinctly Silicon Valley ethos (Dirlik, 2006; Han, 2017). Academic scholarship regarding shanzhai has often focused on the popularity of shanzhai phones, luxury items, subversive television programming, and other forms of technology, pointing to the mobility of branding and its relation to globalized desire and cultural capital (Cui, 2012; Jiang and Shan, 2016; Keane and Zhao, 2013; Liao, 2017; Zhang and Fung, 2013). While mobile games like Onmyoji do not enact shanzhai in the same manner as counterfeiting a corporate-branded product, I argue that the spirit of co-opting a recognizable aesthetic that stems from another’s nation brand retains much of the same dynamics and tensions between the desirability associated with the original and the reception of the replica.…”

An exploratory study of the upper middle-class consumer attitudes towards counterfeiting in China

“…Contributing to this problem, China is considered the major producer of counterfeits (Bian and Veloutsou, 2007;International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition, 2014;Jiang and Cova, 2012;OECD, 2016) and the largest consumer of counterfeit products (Cheung and Prendergast, 2006). Previous studies regarding counterfeits in China have used mixed economic and social background samples to explore consumers' ethics (Bian et al, 2016;Li et al, 2018;Li and Seaton, 2015), cultural values (Wan et al, 2009), interpersonal and personal effects on counterfeit luxury brand consumption (Jiang and Cova, 2012), economic, ethical and sociopsychological perspectives (Sharma and Chan, 2016), and 'face' and brand consciousness (Jiang and Shan, 2016). Yet, many marketing scholars and practitioners still find China to be an 'enigma ' (Ucok et al, 2015), as the attitudes and behavior of Chinese consumers is rapidly changing as a result of the fast-economic development (Sharma, 2010).…”