Chapter Ii Related Literature Critique Essay
Chapter II. Review of Related Literature According to Jamal Natour and Rewa Leila Anabtawi(2012), Purchasing counterfeited luxury products and downloading pirated items have becomemore common nowadays. Fashion and IT industries are affected negatively by consumers’supportive attitude towards piracy and counterfeits. Many luxury branded companies havetheir exclusive brand names stolen by counterfeits producers. Likewise producers ofcomputer software, music, and movies are affected by individuals who download/streamtheir items for free.
Consumers’ attitudes towards counterfeiting and piracy are importantto examine as to understand their acceptance and rejection towards counterfeits and piracy. The purpose of this thesis is to examine consumers’ attitudes towards counterfeits andpiracy. What is accepted and rejected by consumers? To answer the research questions, aqualitative method is used. The data is collected through semi-structured interviews with12 consumers of both/either counterfeits and piracy. The study is performed in Skane(Scania), Sweden, mainly in Malmo, Perstorp and Kristianstad.
We implemented the Theory of Reasoned Action, Theory of Moral Reasoning, ConsumerTheory and different attitudes for analysing the empirical presentation. The result of thestudy showed that the interviewees had a more accepting attitude towards piracy while themajority of them had a rejecting attitude towards counterfeits. Due to the fact thatcomputer and IT have become a part of the everyday life for many individuals. However,the interviewees who buy counterfeits consume the items while they are on vacationabroad since the supply of counterfeits in the Swedish market is not very big.
When itcame to piracy and counterfeited products, the age of the interviewees did matter to someextent. Also, price was one important element why consumers are interested in counterfeitsor download piracy. This study contributes to fill the gap in the lack of studies of consumers’ attitudes towardsboth piracy and counterfeits. The conclusions can be used as a guideline and tool forcompanies to be aware of consumers’ attitudes towards illicit products. (Parker, 1998) found out that Software piracy can be defined as “copying and using commercial software purchased by someone else”.
Software piracy is illegal. Each pirated piece of software takes away from company profits, reducing funds for further software development initiatives. The roots of software piracy may lie in the early 1960s, when computer programs were freely distributed with mainframe hardware by hardware manufacturers (e. g. AT&T, Chase Manhattan Bank, General Electric and General Motors). In the late 1960s, manufacturers began selling their software separately from the required hardware.
Current illegal software in the US accounts for 25 – 50% of the software in use (see web sites below for further detail). Other countries often have levels of piracy well beyond that of the US. For example, Carol Bartz, the president and chairman of Autodesk, Inc. (www. autodesk. com) reports that one of their flagship products, AutoCAD, has 90% of the computer-aided design (CAD) market in China, yet sales are virtually negligible due to the widespread acceptance of software piracy (Fighting Computer Crime: A New Framework for Protecting Information, Donn B.
Parker, 1998). A number of annotated web sites at the end of this document contain information regarding estimates of software piracy throughout the world. Bartz also states that many software companies are reluctant to pursue the educational market due to concerns that several copies of purchased software may lead to millions of copies of illegal software, produced “in the name of educating children”.
