Last month, the Wall Street Journal featured an article that discussed the efforts currently underway to deter people from buying counterfeit products. It pointed out that many anti-counterfeiting messages fail to address the underlying motivation which leads people to buy counterfeit products.

The authors surveyed people in the United States, Brazil, China, India, and Russia. They asked consumers to consider and rank five factors that may influence their decision to buy counterfeit drugs or a pirated movie – quality, cost, sentiment, ethics and ease of purchase.

Not surprisingly, the researchers received very different responses from the survey participants as to “why they would buy a fake DVD” versus “why they would buy a counterfeit drug.” But overall, the authors found consumers would buy a fake because:

• they thought it was just as good as a legitimate product;
• they could not afford the genuine product;
• they do not like the big businesses that make the authentic products;
• they do not think it is illegal or immoral to do so; and/or,
• the products were easy to obtain.

Read the rest of this article on counterfeit drugs .