Quote:
Originally Posted by C5driver
It would be an assumption to make this statement.
However, it might be safer to assume that the average person wouldn't know the difference between a quartz and an automatic movement. Therefore, the average person who buys a fake Rolex is buying the name and not because he/she is seeking a mechanical watch.
Keep in mind the market for fake watches is not the $800 replicas, but the $50 Chinatown shop or the Times Square cart guy.
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Red:
Yes, it is an assumption. And, no, I haven't conducted a statistically valid study to test its verity.
I just went on what it seems I've observed and how I think about any product. Doing that, I can say that it's possible that I thought I bought, say, authentic Ray Bans, or something else at a "good price," but if they aren't, I don't care because as long as are met my expectations for their performance, I'm content. If I were to someday learn I indeed bought a fake pair of sunglasses, I'd be annoyed from an integrity standpoint, perhaps from a monetary standpoint, but not from a Ray Ban vs. fake Ray Ban sunglasses performance standpoint.
The point is that brand names function as a sort of shorthand for what we, myself included, as consumers can expect in terms of product performance; however, they aren't what most of us, most of the time, deem as being important about the products we buy. And folks hung up on/purchase for the emotional and social aspects of branding are most certainly among the people who care.
Of course, I know there are people who care about the brand name on the product(s) they buy. As a curatorial watch collector, I do care that my Rolex is a real one; it must be a real one in order to fill its intended role in my collection. Beyond that one reason, I really don't care whether my or your (seems to be) Rolex is authentic.
Blue:
I really doubt that is so. I strongly believe the market for fake watches exists primarily in the PRC where literally billions of people buy not only fake watches, but fake, copies, of all kinds of stuff. I'd be shocked to find that the quantity of folks who buy fake watches in every U.S. city combined comes close even to the quantity of folks in one large PRC city who buy fake watches. Some estimates place the value of the counterfeit goods market in China at ~$20B or ~20% of the Chinese domestic market. In a market having at least five billion consumers, that just dwarfs whatever be the number of fake goods consumers in U.S., such as in Times Square or Chinatwon New York, and similar locales in other major U.S. cities. (
http://www.bpastudies.org/bpastudies/article/view/15/35)
Other:
Many folks in this thread have written about folks "fronting." There's no question that there are folks who are doing that by buying fakes, but they are hardly the only kinds of fake watch (or fake anything else) consumers.
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http://www.chinaeconomicreview.com/f...e-brands-china
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http://www.open.edu/openlearn/societ...terfeit-brands
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http://marketingtochina.com/40-of-ch...-kept-silence/
I could be wrong, but I really think that most posters in this thread have only presented their thoughts from the emotional and social/product status angle. I think that because I have yet to see even one person address the matter in terms of economic principles. To the best of my recollection, not one person has even mentioned the ideas of economic substitution and elasticity of demand, for example.
I think in terms of economic and business principles, I think the counterfeit goods market -- buyers and sellers and products -- matters. In terms of emotional, social and product functionality, I don't think whether an item is fake or not matters at all. It may matter to individuals who buy or don't buy those goods, but as I think about the persons who own them, the fakeness of their "whatever" isn't what crosses my mind. That doesn't cross my mind because, in the main, I think individuals, and people collectively, are more complex than what can be gleaned or inferred (correctly or not) about them on the basis of the goods they buy.
All the best.