Ben Fitzpatrick.

[photo © copyright Ben Fitzpatrick]

Pity the poor driver? Not especially. The relentless bleating and special pleading of "the motoring lobby" can be a baleful and wearisome sound. If it's not fuel duty then it's speed bumps or other traffic control measures in residential areas, or speed cameras and their oppressive habit of photographing cars which are... er... speeding.

The lobby speaks with a libertarian voice in which regulation is victimisation, which gives the impression that rule keeping is for other people. It also masks the reality that driving in contravention of certain rules can actually constitute criminal behaviour, and is therefore a matter of public concern.

It is hard to pin down a definition of what "a crime" is. What we can say is that a crime is a behaviour in which society, through its lawmakers, has chosen to take an interest, and which it has chosen to prohibit or regulate. That goes for bad driving as well as burglary.

However, drivers are citizens too, and if one is going to complain about their predilection for casting themselves in the role of victims of an overbearing state, then one needs to be as sure as one can be that the laws in question are being applied appropriately. This is a question of the rule of law - the idea that laws apply equally to everybody, whether they be ordinary citizens, members of government, or whoever.

Moaning drivers may well be irritating, but denying them their due legal protections is ultimately bad for us all. It might, after all, be us on the end of a perceived unjust law one day (and given that under the current government, more than 600 new criminal offences have been created, it's likely that there are a few such laws out there).

The main purposes of law enforcement are numerous, but ultimately, enforcement, in theory, enhances the public good by preventing, deterring and detecting offending behaviour. It does this while respecting the rights of individuals - suspects, victims and witnesses - affected by enforcement processes. Moreover, appropriate enforcement enables citizens to feel that the authorities are acting in their interests.

Enforcement, when done properly, enhances the legitimacy of those doing the enforcing. Thus, enforcement activity which is based on any kind of quantitative target is problematic, because priorities can become skewed. The target becomes the priority, rather than the deeper purposes which the target is supposed to serve. The problem becomes exacerbated when the target is set by a body distant from the streets.

In recent years, the police have been subject to a bewildering array of targets from central government. These are linked to future funding (and of course, to the career development of individuals) and inevitably lead to a shifting around of finite resources at local level.

If central government wants you, the local senior officer, to increase detection of vehicle crime, then perhaps you'll start increasing police presence at the local car parks and high density residential areas, where the opportunities for such offending are higher. You'll then have less resource to police retail crime - which might have been a bigger deal in your own area than vehicle crime.

"the police are not servants of government"

You may meet your targets, but at the cost of antagonising the local retail sector on the way, and thereby creating a legitimacy problem for yourself. The central target has distorted your local priorities. There is also a deeper problem here to do with the erosion of the constitutional independence of the police – the police are not servants of government, they are servants of the law.

So even in the domain of so-called public policing, economic imperatives, dressed as performance targets, can affect decision-making. When we’re looking at the allegedly overzealous enforcement of parking regulations, we have a further issue to contend with. The enforcement function has been “contracted out” by a public body, the local authority, to a private agent, whose priority is enhancement of shareholder value, and who is not hindered by the more noble constitutional traditions of public policing.

The enforcement agent wants to retain the contract with the local authority; the local authority, driven by the politics of the time to act more and more as if it too was a private body, seeks to maximise revenue, and an unholy alliance is formed, from which the interests of citizens are excluded, and in which legitimacy is the scarcest commodity.

Despite the fact that parking violations may not be crimes in the strict sense, being ticketed is not simply a private matter between us and the agent; it affects our liabilities as citizens – if we don’t pay, we can end up in court. As citizens, we have a proper expectation that when rules are enforced against us, they will be enforced fairly and for appropriate reasons.

Law enforcement is inevitably a matter of some discretion: it is sometimes more proper and more effective in the long run to deal with minor infractions of rules in an informal manner, particularly when the person who has broken the rule is either deserving of sympathy or is capable of learning from the experience. However, if you’re a parking attendant and your bonus is at stake, these informal avenues are closed off, you’re less inclined just to have a word, and you are impelled towards issuing that ticket.

So if you’ve parked where you shouldn’t have, don’t complain about the simple fact of being ticketed, but do ask why you’ve been ticketed, because that matters. The prevalence of ticketing in a given area should be linked to the prevalence of problem parking, not to the contents of the contract between the local authority and the enforcement agent. The core purposes of law enforcement were touched on above, and raising revenue was not one of them, although prolific ticketing probably causes less of a political headache than putting up council tax.

Further reading

• Outsourcing – few companies haven’t considering outsourcing in recent years, what does it mean, and what makes so compelling?
• Police – comprehensive government guide to all law enforcement matters
• National Policing Plan published by the Home Office
• Constitutional and Administrative Law by Hilaire Barnett
• Plural Policing: The Mixed Economy of Visible Patrols in England & Wales by Adam Crawford, Stuart Lister, Sarah Blackburn and Jonathan Burnett
• Handbook of Policing by Tim Newburn

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As the fake trade mushrooms and with internet sites already awash with World Cup merchandise at knock-down prices, Umbro is braced for an influx of copycat kit.

The company is right to be anxious. With 12% of all sports goods now counterfeit, global figures reveal the shocking scale of the problem. Dozens of unscrupulous suppliers are preparing to replicate Umbro’s designs and products.

Consumers queuing to exchange their cash for cheap and cheerful imitations have one question on their lips. Why pay 40 quid for a genuine football team strip when a tenner buys a pretty good rip-off? For Umbro, stemming the supply of these cheap copies is only part of the problem. Handling the demand side: persuading the public to ditch the fakes in favour of genuine items from authorised outlets, is even more of a challenge!

At a time when all types of consumer goods are fair game for the counterfeiters, Umbro’s drive to interrupt supply is understandable. In a market awash with everything from fake watches and designer labels to cosmetics and prescription drugs, even the artificial tan is fake. Soon car boot sales, market stalls, newspaper classifieds and Internet auction rooms will swell with soccer gear, as cup fever fuels demand for the best-loved strips.

For Umbro the stakes are high: these counterfeit encounters are much more than a short-term threat. The risks include long-term damage to its brand and consequences for its financial fortunes.

Supply is fed by an overwhelming influx of dubious goods from counterfeiting hotspots such as the Far East. Consumer protection specialists explain that there is a high price to pay for supporting the fake trade. The image these experts present is stark, and their warning for consumers is bleak: your kit may be cut-price, it may even be the right colour and fit, but it’s likely to be shoddy quality and your consumer rights will disintegrate when the second-rate materials and printing fail in your washing machine.

"Your soccer shirt could be funding illegal trade, gun crime and even terrorism"

More shocking still, your soccer shirt could be funding illegal trade, gun crime and even terrorism. And that’s not all. Legitimate business is paying the highest price. Last year alone 17,000 European jobs were lost as a result of brand counterfeiting. According to the Anti-Counterfeiting Group (ACG):

Legitimate traders are hit when fakes undercut their markets, and the black market each year is worth around £9bn, on which unpaid VAT alone would fund several new schools and hospitals.

Despite such dire warnings, many consumers remain relaxed about the counterfeiting malaise. A recent report for The Organised Crime Task Force revealed that shoppers see fakes as a bargain, justifying their behaviour on the basis of the prohibitive price tags of genuine items. Many are either unaware or unwilling to acknowledge the darker side of the trade.

"Ultimately it is the consumer who decides whether to pay full price or be lured by the bargain-prices of copycat kit"

For Umbro, this is the root of the problem. Ultimately it is the consumer who decides whether to pay full price or be lured by the bargain-prices of copycat kit. These shoppers are savvy, and a growing number are prepared to pay for counterfeit brands. Umbro’s best chance of solving the problem is to develop an effective marketing strategy based on a clear understanding of consumers’ motives, perceptions and behaviour.

Consumer behaviour is defined as the purchase and consumption activities of ultimate consumers who buy products and services for personal or household use. Anticipating these buying patterns is the challenge for all marketing practitioners as they strive to influence this behaviour. Consumer expert Bernard Dubois explains that analysing these aspects of human behaviour involves answering three fundamental questions:

1. Who buys? What is the consumer’s identity?
2. How? What is the purchasing process like?
3. Why? What factors explain the purchase?

This last question is particularly intriguing for businesses striving to understand key customer drivers. Dubois expands on this point by describing three groups of explanatory factors, occurring at these levels:

• individual
• interpersonal
• sociocultural

Taken in combination these variables influence consumer preferences and purchase patterns. At the individual level, this involves an appreciation of consumer motivations, perceptions, experience and attitudes. It is with these factors that Umbro must grapple if it is to successfully attack the fake demand problem.

Umbro needs a twin strategy to tackle the fakers. Whatever action the company takes to locate the counterfeiters and stem supply, it must also strike at the heart of consumer demand. The sports gear supplier must rapidly tune into what motivates shoppers to buy these cheap imitations. Is it really all about price? Is quality a key consideration, or are there other factors at play?

Recent research by ACG pinpointing cost as a key driver in the market for fakes, also suggests that decisions are not purely driven by economic considerations. For buyers of DVDs, speedy access to new movies has fuelled the fake trade, while availability is also an issue for toy buyers. It is these kinds of nuances which soccer strip suppliers must grasp if they are to dissuade consumers from their errant behaviour. Ready, convenient access through a mix of retailing channels may be as important to consumers as low price.

Football pundits are already speculating about which nation will lift the 2006 World Cup. The victorious team will be assured an enthusiastic response from its supporters. Whether the football strip sported by these fans will be genuine, is much less clear. Some of the omens are good, not least because enforcers are demanding tougher legislation and stiffer jail terms for fakers.

For Umbro the message is clear. Winning the game depends on a twin strategy to tackle both the demand and supply side issues. The final whistle in Umbro’s encounter with the counterfeiters may be getting closer, but the tournament is only just beginning.

Further reading

• Understanding the Consumer by Bernard Dubois, published by Prentice-Hall
• The Deadly Trade in Counterfeit Goods by Tim Phillips, published by Kogan Page
• Anti-Counterfeiting Group
• Fake Nation? A study into an everyday crime research conducted by Dr Jo Bryce (University of Central Lancashire) and Dr Jason Rutter (University of Manchester)
• Securing your brand – how do you build value into a brand and  how do you preserve that value?
• The trainer tamer – how Jonah Perretti became the scourge of Nike

About the author

Sally Dibb is Professor in Marketing at the OU Business School. Sally chairs the Academy of Marketing's Special Interest Group in market segmentation.

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