The Effects Of Consumer's Attitude Toward Piracy, Ethical Beliefs And Relationship Quality On Their Intention Of Purchasing Counterfeits

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 (Chan et al., 1998). Consumers with low ethical standards may be the key variable that breeds unethical behavior. However, Murpfy and Laczniak (1981) 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 (Engel, Blackwell, and Miniard, 1995). 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.The questionnaire design has used the scale from Kwong et al. (2003), Muncy & Vitell (1992) and Smith (1998). And it was made some adjustment. The consumers of Qinhuangdao in hebei province are chosen as target subjects. We used the convenience sampling to collect data. We conducted questionnaire from March 20 to Match 27. We distributed 250 questionnaires there and a total of 221 usable questionnaires were collected (83.2% response rate). As to data analysis, we use descriptive statistic analysis, factor analysis, reliability & validity analysis, pearson correlation analysis and Hierarchical regression analysis.The finding revealed that the moderating effects of relationship quality existed on the relationship between attitude toward piracy, consumers'ethical beliefs and purchasing intention of counterfeits.The lower the consumers'relationship quality was, the more willing to buy counterfeits would be because of supportive attitude toward piracy. The higher the relationship quality was, the lower purchasing intention of counterfeits would be made because of high ethical beliefs. Therefore, relationship quality would not be a good indicator to affect consumers'intention of purchasing counterfeits.According to studies, there are some suggestions for the government, enterprises and organizations of a series of anti-counterfeiting, including improving the legal control, strengthening advocacy about the social costs of counterfeiting and infringement, stressing that the purchase of counterfeit goods will not bring social benefits and strengthening the sense of crime to buy counterfeits. The manufacturers should improve the relationship quality with the consumer to interfer the intention to buy counterfeits. As for recommendations for future research, it includes controlling samples and samples of the external environment, studying other factors which may affect the attitude of counterfeiting and infringement, exploring whether ethical beliefs will affect consumer attitudes toward piracy, considering the role of other moderating variables.This study riches the business ethic topic from the consumer ethic aspect. Particularly it developed an important moderating variable between the consumer ethical belief (attitude) and the intention of purchasing counterfeits. If it is difficulty for the organization to change consumers'belief or attitude, then using the imposition of the moderating role of relationship quality will achieve the similar results to change beliefs and attitudes. This enhanced the organization's ability to interfere the intention of consumers to purchase counterfeits.