Vol.:(0123456789) Journal of Brand Management https://doi.org/10.1057/s41262-020-00189-4 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Counterfeit versus original patronage: Do emotional brand attachment, brand involvement, and past experience matter? Xuemei Bian 1  · Sadia Haque 1 Revised: 13 March 2019 © The Author(s) 2020 Abstract To enhance brand performance and to protect original brands from the unprecedented upsurge of counterfeits, marketers are continuously looking for efective anti-counterfeiting methods. Developing and maintaining emotional brand attachment and brand involvement with consumers have become a strategic marketing endeavor of luxury brands. A signifcant question bearing both theoretical and practical implications, however, is whether emotional brand attachment or brand involvement is more apposite to warrant a luxury brand’s performance and to safeguard the original brand from counterfeits, which remains unanswered. To address this knowledge gap, a survey was conducted. On the basis of an empirical study, this paper reveals that emotional brand attachment is a more prominent infuencer than brand involvement to escalate original brand patronage although the efect of brand involvement is also signifcant. However, while improved brand involvement pushes consumers to patronize counterfeits, higher emotional brand attachment does not result in increased counterfeit patronage. These efects do not vary as a function of previous experience of either originals or counterfeits. Findings of this research contribute to brand literature by presenting empirical evidence of distinct infuence of emotional brand attachment over brand involvement, which represents signifcant practical implications in relation to strategic brand management and anti-counterfeiting strategies. Keywords Emotional brand attachment · Brand involvement · Past experience · Original luxury brands · Counterfeits · Consumer patronage Introduction Emotional brand attachment research has gained momentum in recent years. Research fndings demonstrate that brand attachment leads to consumption behavior and a higher level of consumer loyalty, which provides a guarantee of sustain- able fnancial per formance (Park et al. 2010). Research also reports the feelings that a brand generates, which have the potential to diferentiate one brand from another and consumers are usually emotionally attached to only a limited number of brands (Park et al. 2010). In practice, building emotional brand attachment with consumers has also increasingly become a strategic marketing endeavor of businesses, particularly in luxury brands (Cailleux et al. 2009; Theng et al. 2013). In contrast, brand involvement, a long-established concept, is also proven to have a signifcant efect on consumer decision-making and brand commitment (Mittal and Lee 1989). Developing and enhancing emotional brand attachment and brand involvement are both common strategies adopted by practitioners to improve performance. While the research fndings support these marketing strate- gies, a critical question bearing signifcant theoretical and practical value remains unanswered: is emotional brand attachment more pertinent in determination of luxury brands’ performance than brand involvement? Moreover, there is unprecedented upsurge of demand for counterfeits (OECD 2017) and in reality that luxury brands, the most afected by counterfeits (Wilcox et al. 2009), are fghting a losing battle despite the fact that they are increasingly invest- ing in anti-counterfeiting (Bian 2018). Thus, when and how emotional brand attachment or brand involvement may be efective in eliminating demand for counterfeit luxury brands requires research attention. Counterfeits have become a serious global problem in the last couple of decades, partially attributed to luxury brands that have been making branded products widely accessible and afordable via mass production. An estimation from the * Sadia Haque sadia.haque@northumbria.ac.uk 1 Northumbria University, Ofce – 417a, City Campus East 1, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK