An Ethics Analysis Of Consumer On Consuming Counterfeit Product Behaviors

With the higher degree of globalization, the prevalence of counterfeiting is emerging as one of the most troublesome problems besetting an increasing number of industries and countries. According to International Intellectual Property Alliance 2007 Special 301 Report (PRC), it caused the total loss of 2207 million USD for Chinese companies by illegally faking and literary piracy. China is notorious for piracy and counterfeits. It not only caused serious economic losses, but also damaged the country's reputation and increased the huge social costs. It was believed that the desire for excessive profit is the major reason for those purchasing counterfeit activities. And most previous studies about counterfeit were from the legal or patent aspects. Consumers, however, are the actual force in the trades. Consumers with low ethical standards may be the key variable that breeds unethical behavior. However, Murpfy and Laczniak concluded that the vast majority of studies had examined ethics as they relate to business or marketing situations, while only 5% examined ethics in consumer situations. As consumers are a major participant in the business process and not considering them in ethic research can result in an incomplete understanding of that process. So an understanding of why some consumers engage in purchasing counterfeit could be helpful in ultimately reducing the incidence of counterfeiting.As the individual behavior is the performance of the individual intention, and the intention is determined by the attitude toward that thing. So the attitude toward piracy is used to study the intention of purchasing counterfeits. What is more, the low ethical standard may also be a factor which caused the unethical behavior. As a result, the consumer ethical belief is another factor about the counterfeiting and piracy topic. But intention is not only decided by the attitude and belief, it also can be affected by moderating variable. Relationship quality is always used as the moderating variable among the attitude, belief and intention. So it is forecasted that the relationship quality plays an important role as a moderating variable among consumers'ethical belief, attitude toward piracy and the intention of purchasing counterfeits.