Our work at Blue Cromos is about preventing unintentional purchasing of counterfeit products. In other words, helping people who want to buy genuine items to avoid ending up with fakes.
But then there are those who know or suspect that items are counterfeit and buy them anyway, because they don't care or they can't afford the genuine item but still want to pretend.
Who buys counterfeits on purpose?
Two groups intentionally buying counterfeits.
For some of them it's a matter of morals, or rather the lack of.
For others it's a matter of a sad combination of necessities and lack of means. You need a pharmaceutical but can't afford it, for example. You buy a pharmaceutical you CAN afford but you suspect it's a knockoff, hoping it will still give some effect.
For the last group, we feel pity.
For the first group we feel disdain.
Buying counterfeits because of lack of morals and empathy
If you meet such people and want to make them understand how they feed organized crime and which effects their behavior has on others, the environment etc., you can save your breath. They don't care. The top reasons for them to stop buying counterfeits are all about them. Not about others.
That is, at least, what a EUIPO report from early 2023 tells us. In the report European citizens and intellectual property: Perception, awareness and behavior 2023, respondents got to choose between 11 reasons that could make them stop buying counterfeits. (plus a 12th alternative: Nothing would make me stop, 4%)
Read that list carefully. Did you notice that reasons 1-5 are all egoistic, as is #11? The first altruistic reason doesn't appear until #6.
These statistics tell us about the 13% of the responding Europeans who intentionally buy counterfeit products. (26% of those between 15 and 24). Obviously, if you want them to change their behavior, you have to use arguments about them, not others.
The remaining 87%, people who do want to buy genuine items, we can help through isAuthentic – the easy way to ensure that items for sale are authentic.
We're the ones cutting the edge
At Blue Cromos, we don't add fancy labels. We don't add "magic" ink. Nor do we add any transmitters of any kind. We do product authentication like nobody else, using our patented fingerprinting technology. We're cutting the edge of technology to make life easy for you.
Curious? Get in touch!
Do you want to learn more about how isAuthentic can help you fight the counterfeiters? Just get in touch here