Copycats - a research concerning the attitudes consumers' has when familiar companies copies less familiar companies

Abstract: The goal of this paper was to explore the type of attitudes with regards to the ABC-model consumer has towards familiar brands that use copycatting as a persuasion attempt. This was done in order to highlight the phenomena and to determine if brand familiarity affects consumers’ attitudes towards copycats. A qualitative research methodology was chosen and 25 interviews were conducted with the sample gathered from students at Linnaeus University. It was found that brand familiarity affects the consumers’ attitudes to some extent when it comes to more familiar companies copying less familiar companies. Some participants were living under the impression that it was the less familiar company that was the copycat and formed their attitudes against that company based on that. This paper highlights the unfair advantage more familiar companies obtain when copycatting less familiar companies. It was shown that brand familiarity works in the favour for the more familiar company even though they are using a questionable method of persuading the consumer into buying their products. It was found that the participants followed the steps of the “experimental hierarchy of effects” in the ABC-theory regarding the formation of attitudes. Due to hedonic motivations, consumers showed to care less about the negative feelings about the familiar company copycatting. The strong emotional ties with the familiar brand had an effect on the attitude towards the familiar brand. Towards the end of this thesis, recommendations & managerial implications were presented. The consumers of 7xKex and 6xKex were very emotionally driven and managers should realize that not all brands reach that top-of-mind familiarity in Sweden. Managers need to be aware of this and avoid getting tempted by copycat behaviour.