Mitigating the Risk of Product Counterfeiting: The Role of Brands

• In Event: Exploring the Role of Risk in White-Collar/Corporate Crime

Abstract

Brands are an important part of daily life. Product counterfeiting represents a substantially large and growing risk to the sustainability of brands, the health and safety of the consumers who rely upon them, and the economies they support. While considerable discourse has focused on the causes and consequences of this crime, less attention has been given to disrupting it. This research examines the ways in which brands can mitigate their risk to product counterfeiting and the multidimensional negative consequences that follow. Grounded in a total business solution philosophy, it draws on thousands of anti-counterfeiting activities derived from a sample of 42 brand protection experts and the criminal justice and business literatures. This unique set of data helps to identify the components necessary for a systematic and comprehensive program for reducing opportunities for product counterfeiting to occur and for responding to it when it does. In so doing, this research helps to articulate and operationalize the total business solution approach to product counterfeit prevention and to provide practitioners actionable lessons about product counterfeit risk reduction.

Author

• Jeremy M. Wilson, Michigan State University