The Effect of Social Media Influencers on Fashion Counterfeit Purchase Intention among Young Generation

: This study aims to examine the effect of social media influencers on fashion counterfeit purchase intention among the young generation. Social Media Influencer (SMI) has been a dominant marketing trend and businesses heavily invest in SMIs to carry out promotional activities. However, the dimensions of SMI have not been examined widely on fashion counterfeit purchase intention among the young generation. A total of six dimensions of SMI namely, inspiring, technical skills, enjoyability, similarity, informativeness and credibility were used for this study. Data was collected from 389 young generations via online techniques. The findings show that technical skills and informativeness significantly influence counterfeit purchase intention among the young generation. The findings of the study are useful for policymakers to control social media influencers.


Introduction and Background
The counterfeit has been a prolonged problem for many businesses all around the world (Bian et al., 2016). The production and trafficking of counterfeit goods pose a significant risk to many major industries like electric and electronics (Huang et al., 2018;Liao & Hsieh, 2013), cosmetics (Mohammed et al., 2021;Morse & Repsha, 2021), and fashion and clothing (Bhatia, 2018;Song et al., 2021). Studies indicated that specifically footwear, clothing and leather goods scored top rankings in counterfeit production and trafficking (Chui & Yusuf, 2017). For instance, in Malaysia, fashion products like clothing, watches, handbags, accessories and footwear are the biggest target for counterfeit goods (Ong Lai Teik et al., 2015). Moreover, it is believed that counterfeit production has reached an alarming level, causing huge loss of revenue to governments across Southeast Asia including Malaysia (Lin et al., 2018). Countries like Malaysia have been losing a substantial amount of tax revenue, close to an estimated RM8 billion a year (Bernama, 2018) The prolonged counterfeit activities could have a negative effect on the growth of the world's economy and other related problems towards the government and the social environment. The International Trademark Association highlighted the need for more research on the illicit activities of counterfeit goods in Malaysia to aid policymakers and enforcement on the issue (Hashim et al., 2018).
Reviewing the literature on the impact of SMI, there are a few discoveries made, (a) the brand contents endorsed by SMIs (Djafarova & Rushworth, 2017;Freberg et al., 2011) and, (b) the characteristics of SMIs towards that pulling factor for the followers from the SMIs perspectives (Casaló et al., 2020;Cooley & Parks-Yancy, 2019). Scholars focused on identifying the role of SMIs who influence followers' choices and determine their decisions (Ki & Kim, 2019;Lin et al., 2018). Very limited studies focused on the followers' perspectives, especially on what followers desire to fulfill by attaching to SMIs (Ki et al., 2020). Thus, to fill the gap, this study would investigate the attachment between SMIs and followers, especially the younger generation and their needs fulfillment perspective. Thus, the multidimensional scaling used by Ki et al., (2020) will be adopted in this study, namely, inspiration, technical skills, enjoyability, similarity, informativeness and expertise.
Inspiration: Due to the current trend of SMIs, more academicians and practitioners want to investigate this phenomenon (Nafees et al., 2020). Looking into the literature that investigated this inspiration, a few scholars have been found to have examined it in their studies (Jin et al., 2019;Ki et al., 2020;Noonan, 2018;Smorthit & Cooper, 2020). Thrash & Elliot (2004) stated that consumers will get motivated to take action and even incorporate into themselves the sources gained from inspiring individuals and well-known brands. Moreover, findings by Janavi et al. (2021) showed that consumers get inspired by the live presentation of the influencers and more often than not, they will end up committing to online purchases. This is especially applicable during the lockdown when more consumers are glued to social media or the mainstream media to get inspired by the influencers' live streaming and the way they demonstrate their product knowledge (Addo et al., 2020). Jin et al. (2019) asserted that followers that perceived SMIs as inspiring in terms of their personality and achievement would end up imitating them.
Technical skills: Harmonious with other similar studies, Ki et al. (2020) study portrayed similar descriptions to Hassan et al. (2021) but they used the visual aesthetics dimension. This visual aesthetics is described as the skills of presenting by SMIs that can grab the attention of individuals. Creative videos, interesting graphics, appealing stories and photography skills and filtered images are part of interesting, engaging content. These descriptions are what respondents of Ki et al. (2020) had given. The literature also reviewed technical skills that refer to the usage of filtered images to present content (Lou & Yuan, 2019). Thus, technical skills are defined as a technical way of presenting content by using filtered images, creative videos, graphics, appealing stories and photography skills that individuals perceive as appealing and attractive.
Enjoyability: Enjoyability as a dimension was adopted in past studies (Balaban et al., 2020;Balaban & Mustătea, 2019;Ki et al., 2020). Reviewing how enjoyability was executed in all the studies, the words sense of humor, funny and enjoyable was used. Nicolaou & McKnight (2006) suggested that only when followers enjoy the content produced by SMIs, that they would form a favorable attitude. Zytko et al. (2018) examined online users' acceptance of online platforms such as dating apps and they listed the features of the online platform, such as enjoyable rewards, and leading more online users to utilize the online platform.

Similarity:
The extant literature showed that the majority of the studies examined similarity as the formative measurement (Abdullah et al., 2020a;Ki et al., 2020;Lou & Yuan, 2019). Although past studies had not examined it as a single variable, they found that similarity is an important dimension of SMI. This study further fills the gap to understand in detail how similarity plays the role of the stimulus. Past studies were also reviewed to see whether or not the dimension similarity had been examined towards the young generation. Yun et al. (2019) investigated the personality of a brand's Twitter account and the personality of its followers. The findings revealed that the young generation tends to display some similar characteristics just like the brand personality they follow on Twitter accounts. Schewe et al. (2013) in their study asserted that the young generation with the same age categories such as the young generation displays a similar pattern of behavior and preference.
Informativeness: Due to the popularity of SMIs, scholars investigated the aspect of informativeness as one of the dimensions in their studies (Ferreira et al., 2021;Lokithasan et al., 2019;Lou & Yuan, 2019;Tan et al., 2021). Amongst these, only Tan  Expertise: Some scholars have examined the concept of expertise in their studies (Chetioui et al., 2020;Lee & Theokary, 2021;Nafees et al., 2021). While all these scholars examined expertise as uni-dimension, Chetioui et al., (2020) have examined expertise as multidimensional. The scholars argued that the subject matter expert needs to be examined from different perspectives. An SMI may be an expert in copywriting, filtering images, also in the usage of technical aspects like video editing and animation that can attract followers. Following this, (Al-Qatami, 2019) studied expertise as multi-dimensional. The scholars examined the attractiveness, and endorsement of content quality or in other words copywriting. Other scholars also studied expertise as multidimensional and they examined expertise in copywriting and technology (Aviles & Eastman, 2012;Gonzales-Chávez & Vila-Lopez, 2020). However, in this study, the researcher was only interested in examining expertise as a uni-dimension.

Counterfeit Purchase Intention:
The purchase intention of counterfeit is defined as consumers' readiness and the possibility to obtain counterfeit or original products (Eisend & Tarrahi, 2019). In the marketing field, a majority of past literature measures purchase intention (Geng et al., 2017;Noor & Muhammad, 2017). Purchase intention refers to the possibility to purchase or the consideration to purchase the items (Zeithaml, 1988). However, Bogozzi (1978) explained that a purchase intention is an individual act related to preferences. For this study, the purchase intention of counterfeit is defined as consumers' readiness and the possibility to obtain counterfeit products (Eisend & Tarrahi, 2019). Although there are arguments on the use of intentional behavior rather than actual behavior. Few studies have examined counterfeit fashion and adopted purchase intention (Fernandes, 2013;Sharma & Chan, 2017). In the study to examine counterfeit fashion purchase intention in the UAE, purchase intention functions as the measurement (Fernandes, 2013). Moreover, studies that intended to examine the actual purchase behavior also used purchase intention as the major indication of the actual purchase behavior (Sadiq et al., 2021). This is in spite of the fact that debates are circulating that purchase intention does not equal actual purchase behavior (Goh et al., 2016). However, a majority showed that purchase intention is the indication to purchase behavior, or more accurately the actual purchase behavior (Chen et al., 2021;Kanchanapibul et al., 2014;Nguyen et al., 2021). Since most of the buyers of counterfeit products do not voluntarily agree or admit that they purchase counterfeit products, the purchase intention will be used as the dependent variable of this study.
Recognizing the contribution of SMIs towards genuine brands, lately international channels have started to reveal some shocking articles involving SMIs and counterfeit. This had switched scholars' attention. They started to heavily examine the role of SMIs in contributing to counterfeit purchases (Grigsby, 2020). For example, Lou & Kim (2019) mentioned that there is a scarcity of studies examining the role of SMIs in influencing purchase intention. To fill the gap, Lou & Kim (2019) initiated the study and the findings showed that there is a positive relationship between SMIs and purchase intention. Evans et al. (2017) even went one step further to examine Instagram influencers' advertising capability's role towards students' purchase intention and the finding yielded a positive outcome whereby Instagram showed a positive outcome towards forming students' positive purchase intention.
The specific attributes of SMIs that lead to purchase intention were also investigated. The outcome of the investigation led to some interesting findings. Extant literature postulated a positive relationship between SMIs and purchase intention. The study further clarified that specific SMIs characteristics like being inspiring can well lead to the purchase intention (Jin et al., 2019). A similar study by Glucksman (2017) showed a positive relationship between the inspiring personality of SMIs and purchase intention. Chopra et al. (2021) also jumped on the bandwagon when they probed into SMIs' attributes in influencing the millennials' purchase intention. The findings were also in favor of others, whereby amongst the other attributes inspiring was shown to lead to positive purchase intention. Thus, the following hypothesis is created for this study H1: Inspiration positively affects the fashion counterfeit purchase intention among the young generation.
Due to the growing importance of SMI marketing, there were more studies carried out to determine the attributes of SMIs that can lead to purchase intention (Fernando et al., 2021). Among the few attributes of SMIs, technical skills were studied by Jin et al., (2019). The study highlighted that those technical skills are described as the capability of SMIs in displaying content using creative video editing, graphics animation, creative photo editing, and many others. The findings of the study pointed to a positive relationship between technical skills and purchase intention. A study by Batra et al., (2022) also examined the capability of SMIs in terms of their technical skills, especially their creativity in displaying cosmetics advertisements. The creativity in using lighting to show the before and after effects of using cosmetics would be able to influence consumers. The findings showed that technical skills do have a positive effect on purchase intention. Therefore, the following hypothesis is created.

H2: Technical skills positively affect the fashion counterfeit purchase intention among the young generation.
The medium of advertisement no longer depends on traditional media alone. Influencers play the role of a sender between the consumer and a brand. Whether consumers are accepting an advertisement and a product in it depends on the attributes of the influencers (Pop et al., 2022;Wu et al., 2022). One of those specific attributes is the likeability attributes of SMIs (Ki et al., 2020;Lee & Theokary, 2021;Wella Yanti et al., 2019). Likeability refers to the ability of SMIs to be funny, hilarious, cheerful, pleasant and playful (Benito et al., 2020;Ki et al., 2020;Pop et al., 2022). Academicians have been actively studying the effectiveness of these attributes. One of the studies by Benito et al., (2020) analyzed the effectiveness of SMIs on YouTube platforms. They were particularly interested in finding out what made followers form their purchase intention. The findings showed that there is a positive relationship between enjoyability and purchase intention. Specifically, followers prefer SMIs who are cheerful and pleasant.
Another study by Taillon et al., (2020) recognized that SMIs played a significant role in being a human brand that connects consumers and products being endorsed or sponsored. SMIs would generate a huge stream of revenue for a company. However, the study also acknowledged that being SMIs is not an easy task. There are specific attributes that make a particular SMI outstanding compared to the rest. The findings of the study reveal that there is a positive relationship between enjoyability and purchase intention. Consumers will be attracted to products that SMIs endorse or promote if they have injected a sense of humor into their content. Therefore, the following hypothesis is created H3: Enjoyability positively affects the fashion counterfeit purchase intention among the young generation.
The way that individuals communicate, connect, and engage with one another has radically changed because of social media. The most significant aspect is that this platform is crucial in enabling increased influence (Abdullah et al., 2020b). However, to increase their influence, followers of SMIs are very selective. Followers only trust SMIs that have similar cultures, ages, tastes and preferences (Liu, 2022). A study by Taillon et al., (2020) was set to comprehend the importance of intimacy in the relationships that social media influencers have with their followers, and more especially, how the social media influencers may manage their human brands successfully. The findings showed that there is a similarity between the two and the SMIs do have a positive relationship with purchase intention. Besides, studies by Lou & Yuan, (2019) also asserted that similarity attributes did have a positive relationship with purchase intention. Therefore, the following hypothesis is created.  Green et al., 2022;Sudaryanto et al., 2022). Many business sectors rely heavily on SMIs during this pandemic. This is because the content created by popular SMIs would be able to provide good guidance, timely information, relevant information, as well as good sources of facts (al Khasawneh et al., 2021;Daud & Zulhuda, 2020;Jacobson & Harrison, 2022;Szymkowiak et al., 2021). Researchers summarized those descriptions as informativeness. This is the same variable used by other scholars (Green et al., 2022;Ki et al., 2020). For example, Sudaryanto et al., (2022) studied the role of SMIs in endorsing cosmetic products during the pandemic. The study depicted that SMIs become the connecting point as the followers trust their guidance. When consumers are confined to long periods of quarantine, to avoid boredom, females particularly, turn up to SMIs content to seek guidance on ways to apply cosmetic products. The findings showed that informativeness does have a positive relationship with purchase intention.
Other businesses, like tourism, which were heavily affected too by the COVID-19 pandemic also show reliance on SMIs (Femenia-Serra et al., 2022;Kim et al., 2021). Both these studies asserted that popular SMIs with a high number of followers are paid to create content on popular tourist spots. The factual content created serves as a good source of information to followers, subsequently leading to the high demand for virtual tours. SMIs also create content that provides guidance and helpful information on ways to navigate virtual tours. The findings of the study showed that informativeness does have a positive relationship with purchase intention. Therefore, the following hypothesis is created:

Research Methodology
A self-administered online survey questionnaire was used to collect the research data. (Hair et al., 2014) recommended sufficient samples of more than 250 to conduct Structural Equation Model (SEM) with a good alternative for managing missing data of less than 10 percent. University students are used as the sample group to draw young consumers. University students fall into the Millennial or Generation Y age groups respectively. The questionnaire was made available online and students from various universities were invited to participate and a total of 389 samples were collected. In designing the valid and reliable measurement, verified measures from past literature were adapted and rephrased to meet the counterfeit context. Inspiration was measured using a 7-item scale adapted from Bottger et al., (2017). Technical skills were measured using a 6-item scale adapted from Ki et al., (2020). Enjoyability was measured using a 7-item scale adapted from Voss et al., (2003). Similarity was measured using a 5-item scale adapted from Ki et al.,  Table 1 summarizes the profiles of the samples selected for this study. The outliers and missing data were checked and a total of 389 were validated and used for this analysis. In 2019, there were 41 percent of male and 59 percent of female students enrolled in public higher education in Malaysia (Hirschmann, 2020). The sample consisted of 43.4 percent of males and 56.6 percent of females, which is consistent with the data reported. All the respondents purchased at least one type of counterfeit goods endorsed by SMIs. Fashion is the highest (76.9%) counterfeit goods purchased by the respondents.  To determine the validity of the construct used for each variable, factor loading is used. Based on Hair, (2015) a loading value of at least 0.50 and ideally greater than 0.70 indicates that the items' standardized factor loading is highly related to the latent construct. In some cases, the cut-off for the factor loading above 0.60 is still considered to be a reasonable loading, nevertheless. Additionally, it is suggested that the variable item with a loading of less than 0.60 is removed from the statistical analysis to increase the scale's content validity. The outcome of the factor loading presented for each variable is presented in Table 2.

Results
Apart from validity, the reliability of the variables in this study is also examined. The reliability was measured using Cronbach's Alpha (CA) and composite reliability (CR). Both these CA and CR are components of the internal consistency measurement. How closely the items are related to the variables being examined is indicated by the internal consistency metric. If a variable's composite reliability value and Cronbach's alpha both meet or exceed the suggested level of 0.7 as suggested by Hair, (2015), it is deemed reliable. Even though Cronbach's alpha index is frequently used to evaluate reliability, some academics contend that it undervalues this factor. In light of this, using composite reliability had been recommended as a superior Cronbach's Alpha substitute (Hair, 2015;Joreskog & Yang, 1996). As a result, the researcher used the composite reliability as well as Cronbach's alpha values as the criterion for explaining the reliability in this study. All of the variables in this study are reliable and have fulfilled the requirement of convergent validity.
Average Variance Extracted (AVE), is regarded as a more conservative test in addressing convergent validity, is another sign of convergent validity in this study. The error-free variance from a collection of constructrelated items is measured using the AVE (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). In other words, AVE is used to calculate how much variance is attributed to measurement error. Additionally, it has been asserted that convergent validity is only considered adequate when the value of AVE is equal to or greater than 0.50 (Hair, 2015). The results demonstrated that all AVE values are above the prescribed value of 0.50 set by Hair et al (2010).   I intend to buy fashion counterfeit product (s) after being exposed to social media influencer personality The results of the mean and standard deviation for overall variables are presented in Table 3. The discriminant validity of all measures is supported by the fact that the square roots of the AVE for each variable are larger than its correlation.

Discussion
The results of this study provide the first empirical proof that not all the dimensions of SMIs directly affect counterfeit purchase intention. The results of this study add to the body of knowledge regarding how the dimensions of SMIs affect counterfeit purchase intention among the younger generation. This is a significant result because it prevents the younger generation from buying fashion counterfeit products. This study also provides accurate dimensions that need to be focused on by policymakers and marketers. Since SMIs have a significant impact on the behavior of younger generations, this study shows that SMIs also have an impact on their behavior of counterfeit products. This study aims to make several contributions to the area of counterfeit products.
Firstly, this study found that inspiration is not significantly related to counterfeit purchase intentions, and this result is not in line with the existing literature (Chopra et al., 2021;Glucksman, 2017). They prefer credibility while making purchase decisions instead of getting inspired by SMIs. This shows that the inspiration, as the attribute of SMIs does not influence the fashion counterfeit purchase intention of the individuals. Previous research has focused on a famous brand, which explains this study's result. This shows that the young generation does not get inspired by SMIs while purchasing.
Secondly, the findings revealed that technical skills positively correlate to counterfeit purchase intentions among the young generation. This result is supported and aligned with one of the previous studies (Jin et al., 2019). Like other attributes of SMIs, their technical skills are also considered to give them an upper hand over other marketing media. Most SMIs possess and develop the required technical skills to carry out video editing, graphic designing and other operations. This helps them provide a better version of the product they are sponsoring. The creativity of SMIs helps attract more users, encouraging them to spread positive word of mouth to develop brand value. However, the younger generation is highly influenced by the innovative ideas of SMIs, which are represented in their promoted images and videos. Such discussions help in encouraging the results of the present study, showing that technical skills positively affect fashion counterfeit purchase intention among the young generation.
Thirdly, enjoyability is not a significant predictor of counterfeit purchase intentions among the young generation. The current findings do not align with past studies (Monge-Benito et al., 2020;Taillon et al., 2020). The role of SMIs as the sender between the brand and the customers is mainly being promoted these days. The attributes of SMIs contribute to making a brand popular as they help attract younger users. However, the SMIs' likeability attribute is highly focused as funny and playful influencers are likely to engage a larger audience of younger people. Therefore, the enjoyability of SMIs merely helps individuals pass their time, and their decision-making processes are not influenced by it.
Fourthly, based on the statistical results, it is depicted that similarity did not have a significant association with counterfeit purchase intentions. This current outcome is not in line with a few past studies (Lou & Kim, 2019;Taillon et al., 2020). Similarities between the SMIs and the people help them connect emotionally, but when it comes to practicality, the people consider their consciousness instead of being driven by emotions. Conscious consumers are shoppers who make the conscious decision to buy local, ethical and environmentally-friendly products. Their choice of companies to shop in is often based on how environmentally or socially conscious they are.
Fifthly, the present findings show that informativeness is significantly and positively related to counterfeit purchase intentions among the young generation, and this outcome is in line with the previous literature (Femenia-Serra et al., 2022;Kim et al., 2021). SMIs eventually became the source of information for many followers. The young generation is even brought up in the digital world, which explains their dependency on social media for obtaining the necessary information. Thus, the SMIs' informativeness impacts the users' purchase intention as they had no other effective source of information during the covid-19 pandemic. This has eventually become the routine of many users.
Finally, the results highlighted that the expertise of SMIs is not significantly related to purchase intentions. The current study's findings showed that the outcome is not in line with previous studies (Koay et al., 2021;Weismueller et al., 2020). However, it supports the findings of Lin et al. (2021), which stated the negative impact of expertise on the purchase intention of individuals. The experts provide the young generation with various perspectives to guide them toward a better future. Despite this, the young generation often likes to make their own decisions, and they enjoy their autonomy in this case.

Managerial Implications and Recommendations
One of the main limitations of this current study was related to the choice of product. This is because the product selected to represent this study is a fashion counterfeit. During the early stage of research design, screening questions were prepared to identify the most frequently purchased counterfeit products. In the screening questions, six types of counterfeit products were given which are households, fashion, sports, entertainment, IT and medical. Out of these six options, fashion counterfeit appears to be most frequently purchased by the younger generation. The idea that the brands are exclusive is appealing to many people, especially young people. It is tempting to possess something that is not widely available but unaffordable. This is the justification as to why consumers, especially the young ones turn to fake goods and Reddit, for instance, has opened a channel of a huge fashion replica community. The limitation of this is that the findings of this are restricted only to fashion counterfeit products. It cannot be generalized to all counterfeit products in general. This is because the young generation may not only purchase fashion counterfeit products but also purchase entertainment and IT-related counterfeit products. Therefore, future studies can also focus on common counterfeits to get further insights.
Finally, this study has not included the mediating effects of any variable on the relationship between SMIs and counterfeit purchase intention. Based on the stimulus-organism-response model that has been used widely in consumer behavior, mediating should be added to the model. Future studies could investigate the mediating role of motivation factors. For example, self-determination can be used as the mediating variable in the study of counterfeit purchase intention.

Conclusion
The findings could offer marketing practitioners new approaches, how to stop the young generation from purchasing counterfeit products. Technical skills and informativeness are found as important skills of SMIs in influencing the younger generation in purchase intention. Therefore, marketers should support or sponsor individuals or SMIs who are well-versed in technical skills and information. Additionally, marketers might give SMI more information to promote pattern products. Accurate information is important that allows the younger generation to understand the difference between counterfeit and original products.