Jason Rutter & Jo Bryce
Cyberspace Research Unit, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, PR1 2HE

Draft Prepublication Paper: Forthcoming, Sociology.

Abstract

Social science, policy and popular discourse around counterfeiting regularly position consumers of counterfeit goods as part of a technological elite or motivated by anti-capitalist or anti-corporate positions. In order to explore this construction and highlight its associated limitations, this paper presents quantitative data collected through postal and web-based questionnaires looking at the frequency, location and motivations for the purchase of counterfeit leisure items for consumers in the United Kingdom.

Karenza Moore & Jason Rutter (Eds)
ISBN: 1-84052-012-4

An electronic version of the collected proceedings from the 2004 conference "Mobile Entertainment:User-centred Perspectives" is available online for free (6.5Mb Acrobat file). Hard copies are also available. Costing £20 they can be ordered from Joyce.Wilson@manchester.ac.uk.

The Digiplay Initiative is a research collective specializing in consumer research in the areas of digital games, adoption of technologies, online well-being and intellectual property crime. It undertakes commercial and academic research as well as providing online information services to the research community. Focusing closely on users we have developed a multi-discipline and multi-method approach to academic and commercial research. We explore the links between technology, innovation and consumer practice in order to get to the heart of consumer attitudes, motivations and change.

Our research, publications and presentations include:

• The Consumption of Counterfeit Goods: ‘Here be Pirates?’
  Rutter, J. and Bryce, J.,
  (Forthcoming, Sociology.)
• Poca diversión: las barreras de las aficionados a los videojuegos/Not Much Fun: The constraining of female video gamers
  Bryce, J.; Rutter, J., 2007