At Babo intersection in front of University of Ulsan, there are a large number of restaurants. Among these, there are a few beer stores which sell beer and snacks. While walking you will probably see two of these establishments, one is called Bong-gu beer and the other is Chun-ja beer. If you take a closer look at these 2 businesses you slowly begin to realize that they both have a similar sounding name, similar menu items and have pretty much the same interior design. Further down the street you will see Seolbing and Gubingdam, two businesses that sell shaved-ice dishes using Injeolmi and Bean flour. These two businesses are also strangely similar, almost mirror like stores, with similar names, interior design, and menu composition.

 In all of the aforementioned stores, there is of course, an original brand owner among them.  Bong-gu beer and Seolbing are the genuine brand owner stores in this case. The other businesses opened their stores with similar names and marketing strategies because of the success of the original brand owner. These clones are commonly referred to as Copy-Cat Stores and their strategy is called Copy-Cat marketing. Stores of this variety often have simple menus and don’t need any special technology. Small beer stores and Shaved- ice stores are very common examples.

Usually a Copy-cat store’s motto is a ‘Safe 2^nd is better than a dangerous 1^st’. This means, why take the risk of being the first to open a new business, this can be a very risky strategy? So they wait to see if a new business venture is successful, and if it is, they copy it. This method they feel is the safest road to success and profits. Using a Copy-cat marketing strategy, these clone stores penetrate the market by imitating the brand owners products. Therefore, securing their initial investment and saving money on new items, market analyses and research and development.

 Copy-cat marketing is the ultimate strategy for reducing risk. However, because of Copy-cat stores, original brand owners are suffering from lost business. Original brand owners established their products and menus by spending a lot of time and money developing them. Yet, the Copy-cat stores just imitate them without any effort or financial risk. Consumers, unaware of this phenomenon, just see these clones as similar stores and don’t realize the devastating effect it has on the original brand owner’s business. Naturally, their sales decrease. A franchise owner of a small beer store, Kim Ji-won (not his real name) is concerned about similar stores to his that have recently opened near his establishment. He said “At first I thought the new stores might be helpful, however, because these businesses have a very similar managing system and interior I now feel like I’m losing customers to these Copy-cat stores.”

Bong-gu beer is not the only store that has suffered financially because of this harmful marketing strategy. In 2012, Paldo was sued by Samyang for launching a spicy Ramen called Buldak-bokkeummyeon, and they wanted a prohibition of its sale. Samyang stated thay they’ve suffered financially because Paldo’s Bulnak-bokkeummyeon is an exact copy of Samyang’s spicy Ramen. Samyang Foods claimed that their designs with a black background and red flame pattern were copied by Paldo and this has caused confusion to consumers. However, in the end, Paldo was found not guilty. Nevertheless, the consumer’s reaction was quite different. Many people misunderstood and purchased Paldo’s spicy Ramen instead of Samyang’s. People even posted reviews of Paldo spicy Ramen mistaking it as a Samyang product on Samyang’s internet site. If this devious strategy does not go away, there will continue to be strained relations between original brand owners and Copy-cat stores.

Copy-cat marketing can be beneficial to some because it restricts a store’s dominance of the market. Furthermore, cloned businesses can enlarge the scale of the market. Also, in terms of market principles, copying popular businesses is just raw capitalism in action and therefore it should be permitted as a strategy. However, Copy-cat marketing can hamper the development of better products. Some people regard this type of marketing as unethical because it deceives consumers. Original brand owners are the ones though, that really do seem to suffer the most damage for it shortens the life of a business. Finally, excessive Copy-cat marketing can eventually lead to the downfall of both the Copy-cat business and the original store as they drain profits from one another. I feel the only answer is that government regulation is needed. Each new company should have to strive in developing creative business products. Most of all people should follow a basic code of business ethics where there is competition, yet there is also the concept of fair business practices.