Chinese Consumers Are Losing Their Appetite for Fakes

As I blogged earlier regarding counterfeit wines, Chinese consumers, especially upwardly mobile ones, are consuming higher end goods.  Well, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal reports that some Chinese consumers are losing their appetite for fake or counterfeit items.  This is news given that the Chinese have been the headliners for intellectual property theft for quite some time.  Indeed, many a blog post on this particular blog discusses the rampant piracy and counterfeiting occurring in China.

According to the article, there is shift in tastes from the widely popular and available counterfeit goods to authentic goods.  The article, surprisingly to this author, states that 95% of women between the ages of 28 and 35 express that they would be embarrassed to carry counterfeit handbags.  What is surprising is that counterfeits seem to be a way of life for the Chinese, and therefore, consumers caring about authenticity of goods seems to be a non sequitur.  They manufacture most of the top goods (see Apple), and therefore, are able to obtain important information about those products in order to replicate them with much cheaper materials.  So, counterfeits seemed to be (and is) a part of the Chinese culture.  Nevertheless, as China's economic power grows, so does their taste for authentic goods.

This can be very good news for American companies because it opens another substantial market for their authentic goods and may lead to a change in attitude towards intellectual property by China.  Okay, that last part may be a pipe dream right now, but a girl can dream can't she?  The Wall Street article says that the change in attitudes by the Chinese consumers is encouraging American companies to expand into that market.  Of course, those companies should make such expansion cautiously given China's recent and immediate past with intellectual property.

Of course, given China's counterfeiting past, these companies would do well to make sure that they put into place a method or system for allowing consumers to differentiate between authentic and counterfeit.