Name: Atillo, Therese G. Ms.

Phoebe Anga
ABM 11 – 2A Practical Research 1

Impressions of Consumers to Brand Imitations

Review of Related Study

The goal of this study was to investigate whether brand loyalty plays a role in the
evaluation of copycats or imitation products. Ma (2014) suggests that a loyal customer base does
not protect a brand from copycat strategies from the competition in certain situations. The risk is
particularly valid in the case where a major brand is the copycat, as customers will evaluate the
copycat more positively, if they are more loyal to the leader brand. However, having competition
copying the leader brand will improve the overall evaluation of the leader brand, as copycat
behavior confirms the superiority of the leader brand. On the other hand, brands that are
considering to adopt copycat strategies should also consider different factors. Imitating a leader
brand will result in positive responses from loyal customers of the leader brand, but cause a
negative response from consumers that are loyal to the copycat brand. Additionally, consumers
will overall evaluate the leader brand better, if it is being copied, resulting in a relative worse
evaluation for the copycat. This indicates that in the presence of copycat behavior, the
consumers’ response to both the leader brand, as well as the copycat brand is not straightforward,
as the bipolar direction of the effect of brand loyalty on copycat behavior make the net effect
ambiguous. However, it can be concluded that the findings suggest that leader brands with a
loyal following are not completely immune from copycats. Simultaneously, leader brands should
not always perceive copycats as a negative issue, as it can increase the overall evaluation of the
leader brand.
The goal of this paper was to explore the type of attitudes with regards to the ABC-model
consumer has towards familiar brands that use copycatting as a persuasion attempt. This was
done in order to highlight the phenomena and to determine if brand familiarity affects
consumers’ attitudes towards copycats. A qualitative research methodology was chosen and 25
interviews were conducted with the sample gathered from students at Linnaeus University. It was
found that brand familiarity affects the consumers’ attitudes to some extent when it comes to
more familiar companies copying less familiar companies. Some participants were living under
the impression that it was the less familiar company that was the copycat and formed their
attitudes against that company based on that. Lindh and Ollevik (2013) highlights the unfair
advantage more familiar companies obtain when copycatting less familiar companies. It was
shown that brand familiarity works in the favor for the more familiar company even though they
are using a questionable method of persuading the consumer into buying their products. It was
found that the participants followed the steps of the “experimental hierarchy of effects” in the
ABC-theory regarding the formation of attitudes. Due to hedonic motivations, consumers
showed to care less about the negative feelings about the familiar company copycatting. The
strong emotional ties with the familiar brand had an effect on the attitude towards the familiar
brand. Towards the end of this thesis, recommendations & managerial implications were
presented. The consumers were very emotionally driven and managers should realize that not all
brands reach that top-of-mind familiarity in Sweden. Managers need to be aware of this and
avoid getting tempted by copycat behavior.

Su (2006)

Review of Related Literature

Vogel, A, and Watchravesringkan, K. (2017) reveals that the consumer awareness of
imitation practices is important in determining changes in brand equity, brand attitude and brand
preference, regardless of the luxury brand type. Using a scenario inspired by a lawsuit involving
admitted copying practices, this study used a one-way (time of product introduction: the
traditional luxury brand launches the product design before the neo-mass luxury brand vs the
neo-mass luxury brand launches the product design before the traditional luxury brand) between-
subjects experimental design to examine the effect of time of product introduction (such that
consumers are aware of imitation practices) on brand attitude, brand equity (measured via the
dimensions of brand associations, brand image, brand credibility and brand leadership) and brand
preference. This research provides a deeper understanding of consumer response to imitation
practices, along with managerial insight for luxury brands operating in that sphere. Limitations
and future research directions are also offered.
Copycat brands imitate the trade dress of a leader brand to free ride on the latter’s equity.
Copycats can imitate the distinctive, perceptual features of the leader brand, such as the lilac
color of the Milka chocolate brand, or they can imitate the underlying meaning or theme of the
leader brand, such as the “freshness of Alpine milk” theme in Milka. Marketing research and
trademark law have mostly focused on the effects of feature imitation. (Horen and Pieters, 2012)
In three studies, the authors demonstrate the success of copycats imitating the theme of the leader
brand. Consumers consider feature imitation to be unacceptable and unfair, which causes
reactance towards the copycat brand. Yet, even though consumers are aware of the use of theme
imitation, it is perceived to be more acceptable and less unfair, which helps copycat evaluation.
 The authors Satomura, Wedel, and Pieters (2014) propose a method and metric to
quantify the consumer confusion between leading brands and copycat brands that results from
the visual similarity of their packaging designs. The method has three components. First, image
processing techniques establish the objective similarity of the packages of leading and copycat
brands on the basis of their colors and textures. Second, a perceptual decision task (triangle test)
assesses the accuracy and speed with which consumers can identify differences between brands
from rapidly (300 milliseconds) flashed images of their packages. Third, a competing
accumulator model describes the buildup of evidence on each of the alternative brands during
consumers' perceptual decisions and predicts the accuracy and response time of brand
identification. Jointly, these components establish the impact of copycat packaging's visual
features on consumer confusion. The method is applied in a test of experimentally designed
copycats and market copycats in 15 product categories. A three-tiered metric (“copy alert,”
“copy watch,” and “copy safe”) establishes the extent to which copycat brands imitate the
package designs of target brands and identifies which visual features are responsible.

Ma, W.F. (2014, March 18). Consumers’ Response to Product Copycats and the Role of
Brand Loyalty. Economics. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2105/15966
Lindh, V., & Ollevik, A. (2013). Copycats - a research concerning the attitudes
consumers’ has when familiar companies copies less familiar companies. Retrieved from
http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-26681
Su, S. (2006). Consumer evaluations of brand imitations: an investigation. Retrieved
from http://hdl.handle.net/10292/183
Vogel, A & Watchravesringkan, K. (2017) "Consumer evaluations of trend imitation:
brand equity, consumer attitudes and preference", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol.
26 Issue: 5, pp.516-527, https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-07-2016-1257
Horen,V, et. al. (2012). Consumer evaluation of copycat brands: The effect of imitation
type. International Journal of Research in Marketing. 29. 10.1016/j.ijresmar.2012.04.001.
Satomura,T., Wedel, M., and Pieters, R. (2014) Copy Alert: A Method and Metric to
Detect Visual Copycat Brands. Journal of Marketing Research: February 2014, Vol. 51, No. 1,
pp. 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.11.0467