Acknowledgement

We are indebted to many parties for the successful completion of this thesis.
We are utterly grateful for the generosity of support given by our supervisor, Dr. Lau Teck Chai,
who has been with us throughout the progress not merely as the capacity of a supervisor but most
importantly a mentor, colleague and friend. We would also like to extend our gratitude to Ms.
Fitriya binti Abdul Rahim, our co-supervisor, who has been providing us with valuable advices.
Withal to that, we would also like to express our special thanks to all the respondents for their
willingness and cooperation in providing us with constructive feedbacks and in contributing their
opinions by filling in our survey questionnaires.
Also, we would like to toss a token of appreciation to all our friends for their continuous support
and assistance during the progress of this research. More importantly, we would like to extend
our special thanks to our family members for the moral support and the reinforcements they
endowed us with throughout this research progress.











Preface
Worldwide purchases of counterfeit products are perennial and continually rising despite various
industry and government efforts to quell their growth. Malaysia too, is not excluded from this
widespread phenomenon.
By this virtue, it is imperative for manufacturers of authentic brands to identify and understand
the determinants leading to consumer willingness to purchase counterfeit products. In order to
protect their market and sales, these authentic brand manufacturers have to essentially devise
programs that effectively contend to such issues.
Albeit many studies have examined the determinants of consumers willingness to purchase
counterfeit products globally, relatively few published studies in Malaysia have examined the
contributing factors towards consumers willingness to purchase counterfeits not mention under
the context of fashion industry.
In this research, researchers deliberated and conferred some implications pertaining to consumers
willingness to purchase counterfeit fashion products. Pursuant to this research findings and
implications, marketers and manufacturers of authentic fashion brands will be able to draw on
the necessary strategic business action in combating the loss of sales due to the presence of
counterfeits in the market.








Abstract
This study examines the determinants of consumers willingness to purchase counterfeit fashion
products. The purpose of this study is to investigate the reason behind a consumer willingness to
purchase counterfeit fashion products. This study holds significant implication and strategic
importance towards authentic brand manufacturers of fashion and Malaysia government.
The 6 independent variables adopted in this study in investigating consumers willingness to
purchase counterfeit fashion products are: (1) status consumption, (2) perceived risk, (3) price-
quality inference, (4) social influence, (5) past experience and (6) materialism. Through the use
of SPSS version 20.0 in analyzing the 300 questionnaires retrieved from the respondents, it is
deliberately determined that consumers willingness to purchase counterfeit fashion products is
dependent on the factors of past experience, perceived risk and social influence.
The 300 respondents vary in terms of age group and races. In addition, our target respondents are
Malaysian consumers that have purchased counterfeits in the past. Through the findings, we
acknowledged that past experience and perceived risk are amongst the influential factors in
influencing the willingness of consumer to purchase counterfeit fashion products whilst social
influence is the least influential.
The limitations of this study and recommendations for future research study are conferred in the
subsequent chapter. These limitations and recommendations will assist future researchers to
conduct related researches more promptly and accurately.