The Effect of Consumer Self-Brand Connection on Willingness to Buy Luxury Brand Counterfeit

Abstract

Consumer self-brand connection further conceptualized as a consumer’s positively balanced brand-related cognitive, emotional and behavioral activity during or related to focal consumer/brand interactions. Brands have the ability to both influence customer purchase decisions as well as shape consumer identities. The results of consumer self-connection to brand made them loyal enough to buy originals luxury products. While research in both these respective areas provides some solid insight into how consumers view original luxury goods and counterfeits, there are still convinced questions that are ignored therefore left unanswered to truly integrate these streams. Our study first integrates and extend recent research in both areas by first exploring if consumers buy LBC products to fulfill certain psychological needs such as the ability to construct and/or reflect their self-concept (or image) to others using their self-brand connection. Therefore, we investigated the effect of customer’s self-brand connection on their willingness to buy luxury counterfeit products.