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Everyone who opts to buy a counterfeit luxury item has their reasons. It might be too good to resist when a deal pops up, as might the thrill of tricking someone and briefly climbing a few tiers on the social ladder.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But researchers think there\u2019s another reason behind a recent demand surge for fake luxury: a fight against rising income inequality.<\/p>\n
A study<\/a> published by City, University of London found that as perceptions of income inequality increase, consumers will increasingly covet fake luxury goods for their \u201cegalitarian value,\u201d in other words, a good\u2019s ability to restore equality in society.<\/p>\n Academics at City, Stockholm School of Economics, and Harvard Business School surveyed 2,000 participants in the U.S. and Sweden, examining their perceptions of hierarchies and thoughts on inequality to find a new driver of counterfeit buying.<\/p>\n \u201cThe egalitarian value increases consumers\u2019 motivation to purchase counterfeit luxury goods beyond their hedonic, utilitarian, economic, or status signaling value,\u201d the authors wrote.<\/p>\n France, the final resting place of Marie Antoinette, is also home to some of the world\u2019s largest fashion houses, including Bernard Arnault\u2019s behemoth LVMH and Gucci-owner Kering.\u00a0<\/p>\n Like Antoinette, these affluent fashion houses are facing a reckoning from the general public as inequality comes into the spotlight.<\/p>\n In January, LVMH-owned Benefit Cosmetics<\/a> was reportedly in talks to team up with TikTok parent ByteDance to stop a surge of counterfeits popping up on the platform.<\/p>\n In the run-up to the Olympics, Paris police have been hard at work trying to prevent a flurry of counterfeit operations<\/a> around the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n The cost of living crisis pushed inflation into the double-digits and hammered disposable incomes, making counterfeits more attractive as consumers opted for simple luxuries.\u00a0<\/p>\n While price incentives to buy counterfeit goods have increased since the cost of living crisis, so too has inequality.\u00a0<\/p>\n Studies show that poorer regions<\/a> experienced higher price rises, while lower-income households spent more of their income than the wealthy on inflationary items like food.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n As payback, it seems young people are starting to popularize counterfeits, helping them shed their cache of exclusivity.<\/p>\n Researchers also looked at a person\u2019s \u201csocial dominance orientation,\u201d or the extent to which people support hierarchical structures in society based on things like wealth.<\/p>\n People who scored low on this test and were accordingly less likely to support social hierarchies were more likely to get a higher sense of egalitarian value from purchasing counterfeit goods.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think this research is particularly interesting as it links growing inequality to \u201cdeviant\u201d forms of consumption \u2013 such as buying counterfeit luxury goods, suggesting that buying counterfeits is not driven by economic reasons per se, but to achieve a sense of social equality,\u201d said Stockholm School of Economics assistant professor Dr Wiley Wakeman.<\/p>\n \u201cIt also begs the downstream question as to whether mechanisms that increase brand exclusivity \u2013 such as maintaining waitlists for luxury watches or handbags \u2013 may counterintuitively manifest the egalitarian value in and the consumption of counterfeits, explaining why consumers might buy these goods.\u201d<\/p>\n While consumers may, at least implicitly, think they are addressing inequality by opting for a counterfeit Prada or Dior, they\u2019re quite possibly doing the opposite.<\/p>\nLet them wear handbags<\/h2>\n
The real cost<\/h2>\n