You may come across a bag, perfume, or pair of shoes that immediately reminds you of a luxury product you know, but under a different name and at a much lower price. The product does not necessarily claim to be the original, and the buyer may be fully aware of that. Yet they choose it because it gives them part of what attracted them to the original product.

This is where Dupe culture has emerged with force: products that draw on the look, experience, or features of a well-known product and offer them at a lower price, without necessarily being counterfeit copies bearing the original brand’s name.

Economically, however, the phenomenon raises a bigger question: If consumers can get something similar at a lower price, why pay a premium for the brand in the first place?

You are not paying only for the product

To understand Dupes, you must first understand what a luxury brand is selling.

The price of a luxury bag, for example, reflects more than just the leather and manufacturing. Part of its value comes from the design, quality, and experience, but another part comes from the brand itself: its reputation, scarcity, social image, and the story it has built over the years.

That is why a brand is considered an intangible asset. The Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property explains that brands gain value over time, and that protecting them gives their owners rights to use, license, and sell them.

In other words, a company sells not only the physical product, but also the meaning associated with its name.

This is where the Dupe comes in and tries to separate the two: What if we took part of the look or experience, but removed the name and the price attached to it?

Price reveals what consumers really want

This makes the Dupe an interesting test of price sensitivity—the extent to which a consumer’s decision changes when the price changes.

Some customers specifically want the original brand because the name, authenticity, and exclusivity are an essential part of the value for them. For these customers, a similar product is not a complete substitute, no matter how closely it resembles the original.

Another consumer, however, may care more about the design, function, or prevailing trend. If they find a product that provides enough of these benefits at a lower price, the price difference between it and the original becomes harder to justify.

This helps explain the phenomenon’s spread. In data published by market research firm Circana in August 2026, 58% of the shoppers included in its data said they had purchased a Dupe. The firm noted that price is not the only factor: quality, product accessibility, and discovery through social media also influence purchasing decisions.

A Dupe, then, is not always the choice of someone who “cannot afford the original.” It may be a deliberate decision by a consumer who believes the difference in value does not justify the difference in price.

Imitation may reveal the original’s strength

This is where an important paradox emerges.

For a Dupe to succeed, the original product usually has to be well known enough for consumers to recognize the elements it inspired. In other words, the original brand was the one that first invested in design, marketing, and creating desire; another product then comes along to benefit from part of that value.

Recent research supports the importance of this similarity. An experimental study published in 2026 found that moderate design similarity can improve consumers’ evaluations of a Dupe brand and increase their purchase intentions. It also found that positive perceptions of the original luxury brand were associated with a desire to purchase the similar alternative.

This means that a Dupe’s success may, indirectly, be evidence of the original’s success in creating a design or identity that others want to emulate.

But that success also creates a risk: if a look that once distinguished the brand becomes widely available at low prices, the scarcity and distinctiveness that some brands rely on to justify their prices may weaken.

Dupe or counterfeit?

Here, two concepts that are often confused must be distinguished.

A Dupe is not necessarily a counterfeit product. A counterfeit product typically attempts to pass itself off as the original, such as by using the brand’s name or logo without authorization. A Dupe, by contrast, may be sold under a different name, with the consumer aware that they are buying a different product inspired by the original.

That does not mean, however, that calling a product a Dupe automatically makes it legal.

The boundaries depend on what has been copied and which rights are protected in each case. In Saudi Arabia, a trademark may include names, symbols, images, patterns, colors, and other elements used to distinguish goods and services. The Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property is responsible for protecting and enforcing these rights.

There is therefore a fine economic and commercial line between drawing inspiration from a successful trend and coming so close that intellectual-property rights may be infringed.

Competition is shifting from the product to value

For brands, the spread of Dupes changes the question from “How do we prevent cheaper products from existing?” to a more difficult one:

What does a customer get when buying the original that an alternative cannot easily copy?

If the answer is simply the look, price competition may intensify as similar alternatives become more widespread. But if the value includes quality that is difficult to replicate, service, the purchasing experience, continuous innovation, trust, and a strong identity, the comparison becomes less dependent on price alone.

Lower-priced brands, meanwhile, benefit from a clear opportunity: bringing some of the design or experience consumers want to a broader segment of the market. But the closer a product comes to the identity of a well-known competitor, the more important intellectual-property boundaries and the new brand’s genuine distinctiveness become.

What does the phenomenon mean for the Saudi market?

For the Saudi market, the issue is not only the spread of similar products, but also the value of building brands themselves.

In 2025, the Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property recorded more than 64,200 trademark registration applications, an increase of 23% from the previous year. The figure does not measure the Dupe market, but it illustrates the scale of activity related to building and protecting commercial identities in the Kingdom.

This matters as Saudi brands expand into fashion, perfumes, retail, and other sectors. The more companies invest in building a design and identity that consumers can recognize, the more intellectual property shifts from being merely a legal issue to becoming part of a company’s economic value.

For consumers, the spread of alternatives increases choice and sharpens comparisons: Are the name, quality, and experience worth the price difference, or does the alternative provide enough of what I want?

When imitation becomes a test of the brand

Dupes do not merely tell us that consumers like lower prices. They reveal something deeper about the source of value.

If a customer chooses the original despite the availability of a similar, cheaper alternative, it means the brand has succeeded in creating value that goes beyond appearance. If they readily switch to the alternative, a larger share of the value they were seeking may be replaceable than the company expected.

That is why the most important question for brands in the age of Dupes may not be: Who is copying our products?

But rather: Which part of our value cannot be copied?