Secondhand products once have a bad reputation. People who purchase secondhand fashion products are considered not classy, and the buyers are mostly from the middle to lower classes who want to look for trendy products at a low price. The trading of secondhand products has grown and penetrated into the world of fashion with buyers from the middle to the upper class. The desire to always look trendy causes high-end branded fashion products in demand, although it is ‘used.’ Then, the preloved term appears. The board owner can sell his or her branded goods and then make a profit. On the other hand, those who want to boost appearance through branded fashion goods will buy it. A mutually beneficial symbiosis happens.
Preloved products are sold in many online stores. High quality used branded-fashion products are sold at a lower price. On the other hand, the consumer’s desire to buy branded products at lower prices has led to a counterfeit product phenomenon. In terms of counterfeit products in Indonesia, these products are sold at several levels of quality. There is a phenomenon in the market today where some sell products are sold at the same price or similar to counterfeit products as shown in Figure 1 below which shows the Instagram seller who sells the purse sell bag Coach (original) and Chanel (fake) at the same price (Rp 1.4 million).
The phenomenon of sell products and expensive counterfeit products is motivated by consumers ‘ desire to see the latest fashion trends at a more affordable cost. Both types of purchases are actually risky for consumers. Consumer risk refers to expectations of a specific outcome or potential negative event. In purchasing decisions, consumers are essentially exposed to functional, financial, psychological, and social risks. The functional risk is due to the failure of performance over the product utilities, the financial risk is the potential to lose more money than it should, the psychological risks include the possibility of mental discomfort as a result of the transaction, and the social risk associated with bad imagery that causes consumers may experience by consuming a particular product.
Given the risks incurred by consumers when they make purchasing decisions, it is very likely that consumers will experience regret after buying a product. Chances are higher when consumers buy used or counterfeit products. Based on the assumption that consumers act rationally, consumers are aware that when they decide to buy counterfeit products or preloved products, they are aware of the risks they may be liable for, such as a decline in product quality or social expense when friends or family know that the product they buy is a used or counterfeit product. As an implication of this, consumers develop mechanisms to anticipate the regrets they might feel after making a purchase. This mechanism is referred to as agreement regret (Chen et al., 2015). When consumers anticipate adverse outcomes as a result of their actions, their memory and cognition will inform not only about the wrong choices that they have made in the past but also about possible choices appropriate in the future (Davvetas and Diamantopoulos, 2018; Shih and Schau, 2011). Since the selling phenomenon is a substitute for expensive counterfeit products and the fact that both products are sold at relatively similar prices, when consumers consider the advantages and disadvantages of buying expensive counterfeit products, they would prefer to sell products to maximize their purchasing utilities.
The results showed that consumers would reduce their preference for counterfeit products when they realized the regrets they would feel in the future for their purchasing decisions. The study also showed that decreased preference occurred because consumers felt the risk of their purchasing decisions. The results of this study can contribute to reducing the purchase of counterfeit products. The Indonesian government faced significant problems with a large number of hijackers on various types of products: movies, music, software, medicines, fashion products, and some other products. Based on the results of the study, consumers will change their purchase patterns against counterfeit products if their preference for product changes. Authorities can run promotional activities by adding a situation where consumers will be ashamed to buy and use counterfeit products. It can be done by emphasizing the risks that they will experience, such as social risk and functional risk.
Author: Masmira Kurniawati
Link Journal related posts above: journal.unnes.ac.id/nju/index.php/jdm/article/view/18537
