Faking It with Luxury Counterfeit Products: How Social Feedback Can Make Us More or Less Dishonest

Purchase of counterfeit luxury goods is a worldwide phenomenon. Past research in marketing has mostly focused on why consumers purchase counterfeit luxury goods (e.g., Han, Nunes, and Dreze 2010;Wilcox, Kim and Sen 2009). However, little attention has been directed toward understanding how consumers feel, think, and respond to wearing luxury counterfeits. A notable exception is research by Gino, Norton and Ariely (2010), who found that wearing luxury counterfeits made users feel less authentic and resulted in more subsequent episodes of cheating. We examine the social context of wearing luxury counterfeit goods. We propose that consumers feel and respond differently to the experience of wearing luxury counterfeit goods when it takes place in a social context. The first two experiments (Study 1A & 1B) show the social context of purchasing luxury counterfeits influences the way people feel about wearing counterfeits. We find a reversal of Gino, et al.’s results when consumers purchase counterfeits in a social setting. The next two experiments (Study 2 & 3) show that social feedback from others regarding luxury counterfeits influences whether users will engage in further dishonest behavior. We find that consumers engage in further dishonest behaviors—lying about the luxury good being real and being interested in buying more counterfeits—only when others compliment them on their fake luxury product. When others ask a simple question (“Is it real?”), we show a reversal of Gino, et al.’s results. Subsequent dishonest behavior is diminished.