Researchers in China sought out to determine how consumers often confuse “copycat brands” with that of the leading brands. The researchers “applied a word-pair evaluation paradigm in which the first word was a brand name (copycat vs. normal brand both similar with a leading brand in category), followed by a product name (near vs. far from the leading brand’s category).”
Twenty students at a university were used for this study. Two-group of brand names, both copycat brand names named from leading brands and normals brand name were used for this experiment. In addition, “the product names comprised the two following groups: near products in the leading brand category and far products outside the leading brand category.
Results showed that when the product was near the leader’s category, the copycat brand was more preferred than the leading brand. However, in the far product condition, it was not difficult.
To read the full text of the study: Shang Q, Pei G, Jin J, Zhang W, Wang Y, Wang X (2018) ERP evidence for consumer evaluation of copycat brands. PLoS ONE 13(2): e0191475. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0191475