Determinants of Consumers’ Willingness to Buy Counterfeit Luxury Products: An Empirical Test of Linear and Inverted U-Shaped Relationship

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors.

Congratulations on your paper. I think that the research is correctly justified and supported by the literature. Furthermore, a correct review of the literature has been carried out and the hypotheses are correctly designed and supported in the existing literature.

Like all work, your study raises some doubts or possible improvements. In particular, I disagree with the methodology used for data análisis. I would recommend the following aspects to the authors:

1. H1 is correctly supported. However, I consider that value is a complex term, and that a product simultaneously generates different value dimensions: product value, service value, image value, etc. (Kotler, 2000). In my opinion, H1 would be valid in terms of image value and I would have written it that way.

The remaining hypotheses of the model seem to me to be adequate and relevant, as well as robustly justified. But a question arises for me. The authors state that the novelty of this research lies in combining the theory of planned behavior and the theory of risk perception. But, by following the theory of planned behavior they obviate other relevant variables such as subjective norms or perceived control. Why do they only analyze the mediating role of attitude?

2. In my opinion, if the authors emphasize as a hypothesis that attitude acts as a mediating variable in the model, I think that an arrow should be added that starts from the attitude and reaches the purchase intention in Figure 1.

3. The choice of measurement scales seems to me to be questionable in some cases. I especially want to emphasize that:

- I think that the indicators used in the scale of value awareness are too generic and obviate very important aspects of the purchase decision process, beyond the comparison of prices or brands.

- The biggest weakness: Are the authors sure that the scale of social risk perception was proposed by Churchill and later modified by Gerbin and Anderson?

- The attitude scale is based on previous work by De Matos, and perhaps a model for measuring attitudes could have been included that is less focused on the comparison between original products and counterfeit products. Furthermore, I believe that this attitude measure will be highly influenced by the type of product (fashion, electronics, etc.)

4. The authors do not sufficiently explain the method of sampling, the geographical scope of the sample, nor do they reduce the suspicion that the sample is unrepresentative. For example, the sample does not appear to be representative of a population in terms of gender.

5. I believe that by using contrasting scales, the authors could have been more rigorous with item loads and required a value equal to or greater than 0.707.

6. The authors do not sufficiently exploit the study of the control variables, and I believe that in the object of study variables such as income level or education may be very important. Likewise, I think they overlook a moderating variable that is very important to me: the type of product. I do not believe that the relationships proposed in the hypotheses work the same in textile products or in electronic products.

7. It seems to me that the methodology used is not the right one. The type of study, the type of model, the type of hypotheses, etc. Everything leads the authors to use structural equation analysis (SEM), and they do not do so, which is the most important limitation and weakness of the study. In my opinion, they should use this technique to guarantee its publication.

8. Finally, I do not fully agree with some of the conclusions. In particular, I disagree with the first implication for management, since the authors state that, according to the results, companies must adjust prices to attract more consumers to authentic luxury products, but on the other hand this generates the risk of losing customers. So what is the recommendation for the managers of these brands?

Similarly, the second implication for management, which goes deeper into the importance of brand image value, reinforces what I stated in point 1.

In general, the study does not provide implications for management that were not already known, or that could not be extracted simply by applying common sense. This aspect should be improved, as it is the one that would give usefulness to the research.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

While counterfeit is an important topic, I am not sure how it fits the scope of the journal which is based on sustainability. Furthermore, the main premise of this paper is the mediation of "attitude", however based on the research model, attitude is NOT a mediator. I am not quite sure how the authors proposed this considering their is no relationship (arrows) from Attitude to Willingness to purchase.

 

I would recommend the authors look at their submitted manuscript carefully to ensure that the relationships are presented correctly. Additionally, the writing is rather convoluted, especially when describing the regression analysis - it is suggested that the authors find a better and more succinct way to state their analysis. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The topic is interesting and up-to-date, and the presented research results are novel.

The authors use validated research tools, I have found no obvious methodological errors, but the way statistical hypotheses verification is reported is unacceptable ("552 Consequently, H2 passes the verification", "555 H3 is verified") - I recommend any good statistical handbook to the authors to find out how these should be properly worded.

The authors assume that the sample is randomly selected, but in my opinion, there is a bias coming from the way respondents were recruited (only the users of the Questionnaire Star were considered). This should be mentioned in the limitations but was not.

The paper is very well written, it is easy for the reader to follow the authors' argument.

I have no found no appalling language errors, although some phrases could be disputed (e.g. those featuring the plural of 'research', or the possessive of 'consumer' either in singular or plural), they are grammatically correct and as a feature of the authors' style, they should stay.

I'd definitely correct the style of the following phrases:

367 developed by Lichenstein et al. (1993) [9], which is widely cited by many scholars in articles studying counterfeit luxury products.

=>

developed by Lichenstein et al. (1993) [9], which is widely used in counterfeit luxury product studies.

and

514 (Edwards and Lambert, 2007) [60]. Therefore, Edwards and Lambert (2007) [60] developed a regulatory

=>

I'd rephrase it to avoid repeating the two names.

The list of references does not strictly conform to the journal rules.

 

Technical notes:

The references are doubled - given both as (Name, Year) and [number] - the former is sufficient so the latter should be removed.

Figure 1 is not referenced in the main text. It also features text written in font differing in size and style, if there is a reason for that, it should be described in the legend.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Authors,

I am happy to inform you that I have accepted your revision of the manuscript and will recommend it for publication without further changes. Congratulations. I look forward to reading it online.

Thank you for the opportunity to let me contribute a small part to your publication.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I believe that the authors have done a good job of incorporating the reviewers' comments, and the new contributions notably eliminate the initial weaknesses of the paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for putting in the hard work, unfortunately, the clarity of the paper is still missing. For eg., you use the term "basics" while giving information for different models, which on reading seems  needs to be basis.

 

Similarly the manner in which the information is presented for your analysis makes it extremely hard to follow and understand. This study is interesting, however, the manner in which it is presented is rather daunting to read and understand.