Survey Purpose. We launched a consumer survey to measure insights into consumer attitudes towards brands, counterfeits, brand enforcement and the ways consumers view the media under President Jomarie Fredericks’s 2023 INTA Presidential Task Force (PTF). Our goal was to compare consumers’ views and assess generation, gender, or country effects and relay those findings to media outlets. We captured a global perspective to reflect INTA membership by including four countries (i.e., Singapore, South Africa, United Kingdom, and United States of America) that represent a significant economic block, diverse continents, and a proportion of INTA members’ jurisdictions.
Data Collection and Analyses. As a survey expert and PTF member, I hosted, designed, executed, and analyzed the study. With 1600 total consumers, we used equal cell sizes (400 per country) with equal numbers within four generations – Baby Boomers, Gen Xs, Millennials, and Gen Zs. Further the design included an equal number of males and females within each generation. The four country surveys were aggregated for statistical analyses by total, country, generation, gender, and income.
Views of Trademarks/Brands, Counterfeits, Enforcing Trademarks, and Media. While 79.4% of the total consumers believe it is not ok to copy a trademark under any circumstances, consumers’ behavior often varies from their attitudes. Questions captured views of shopping behaviors, trademark brands, counterfeits, enforcing trademarks and views of the media.
Business Owners. One of the most dramatic differences between countries is illustrated in the number of business owners. South Africa reports the highest at 51.7%, then Singapore at 24.3%, UK at 20.5% and USA at 16.3%. This higher rate of business ownership relates to having a better understanding of brand owners’ financial loss from counterfeits. Generationally, more Millennials (31.0%) than Boomers (25.0%) are business owners. Gender wise, more males (32.0%) than females (24.4%) self-report as business owners.
Fashionistas. 68.6% describe themselves as plain and practical shoppers, while 19.9% proclaim to be fashionistas. Consumers from Singapore are highest on plain and practical, while South Africans report more fashionistas. As expected, more females were fashionistas than males. More Gen Zs self-identified as fashionistas than did other generations. One should note the inverse relationship between fashionistas and brand enforcement as older generations support brand enforcement more than Gen Zs did. This is a great discussion point to workshop.
Consumer Concerns. Despite some admitting to knowingly purchasing counterfeits, it is not surprising that 68.2% of consumers care whether brand-name products are authentic and safe. Consumers care more about authentic and safe products, than whether brands are environmentally conscious (44.6%) or politically correct (28.4%).
Right to Enforce Trademarks. Encouragingly for brand owners, a high percentage agree that trademark owners are ok to enforce their rights. Digging deeper into enforcement issues via hypothetical scenarios regarding marks, we see consumers’ personal experiences with local community businesses and business size matter.
Conclusions
In today’s world, many issues impact consumers’ shopping preferences. Authenticity, safety, price, and quality rise to the top. Self-interest affects purchasing counterfeits. Target marketing works for marketing brands as generational differences are often pronounced.
While this study’s purpose was educational in understanding consumers’ behaviors, when it comes to trademark infringement litigation, consumer surveys have a different bent. Likelihood of Confusion studies are specific regarding the universe and product representation. This study is not intended to generalize to trademark infringement litigation or jury venires.
The full report is found at the gold link above. Page 49 of the report has links to all the Appendices with graphs.
