Face Consciousness and Moral Ambiguity: Consumers’ Willingness to Patronize Hospitality Knockoff Brands

The purpose of this study is to examine consumers’ willingness to patronize retail knockoffs, taking Starbucks as an example. We make a connection between consumers’ willingness to patronize retail knockoffs and cultural variation in the form of tightness and looseness. The U.S. and China–two of the largest counterfeit and knockoff markets–represent loose and tight societies, respectively. Through a quasi-experiment design (nationality: Chinese vs. U.S.), findings reveal that in the context of this study, U.S. consumers are more willing to patronize retail knockoffs than their Chinese counterparts. In addition, the study shows that moral ambiguity and face consciousness act as mediators in influencing consumers’ willingness to patronize retail knockoffs. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first empirical studies on consumers’ willingness to patronize retail knockoffs in the hospitality industry, taking face consciousness and moral ambiguity into consideration.