Fashion design itself has an independent artistic value of its own. However, legal protection for fashion design is still lacking. In the fashion market, design piracy and trademark piracy are universal phenomena and the imitation behavior is made by a wide range of subjects in real time. The protection of the authentic holder in the relatively-short-cycled fashion design should be done immediately. Accordingly, this study aims to conduct a comparative research on the laws designed to protect fashion design significantly, to promote the creation of fashion design, and to provide implications for the future fashion design protection. The specific objectives of this study are as follows. First, we aim to examine the market trends relating to the theft of the fashion design between Republic of Korea and the United States. The second objective is to consider current legislation to protect fashion design in Republic of Korea and the United States and to analyze the differences between the two countries. Thirdly, the present study seeks to measure consumers’ perception on counterfeit in order to analyze the current status of design piracy. Our results suggest that both countries cohere in that the market size of counterfeit goods is expanding and fashion products are prominent in the counterfeits market. However, while Republic of Korea is not capable of effectively controlling domestic counterfeit products, the United States is trying to protect the intellectual property rights with regulations of counterfeits through the Customs and Border Protection Agency. In the domain of legal protection for fashion design, the United States enacted individual laws such as DPPA and IDPPA through cooperation with the fashion industry and the legal profession since 2006. On the other hand, the effectiveness of laws for fashion design protection appears to be weaker in Republic of Korea. According to the analysis of consumer perception, Korean consumers continuously buy counterfeit goods, whereas U.S. consumers rarely report having had a counterfeit product purchase experience. Korean consumers have a relatively high level of legal knowledge concerning fashion design protection and, compared to their U.S. counterparts, they are negatively recognized about counterfeit goods. Despite this, they do not hesitate to buy counterfeit products in real life. The results of our analysis of the consumer perception suggest that Korean consumers’ attitudes and purchase behaviors with regard to counterfeit goods are inconsistent; the reason underlying this tendency is that the force of the legal system is insufficient. Therefore, this study suggests to strengthen the rigor of the law-enforcement and to establish the laws that would help enhance consumer awareness in the Korean society.

Exhibitions are becoming a new important marketing tool in the fashion industry. Consumer’s interest in the haute couture and arts is increasing in parallel to the increase of the need of museums to attract visitors. While many fashion brands have been holding exhibitions, very few studies have investigated the effectiveness of exhibitions. This study aims to obtain practical implications which can be applied to further exhibition marketing processes. To this end, the main goals of this study are thus as follows: (1) to analyze the fashion exhibition cases by categories; and (2) to examine customer satisfaction by the fashion exhibition types and to determine how customer satisfaction affects the brand image. In order to classify the fashion exhibition types, a total of 160 cases held in the last five years in all over the world were collected and the range was set to the B2C fashion exhibition practices. For quantitative analysis of the customer recognition, the survey was distributed to total of 309 participants. Each of respondents evaluated three stimuli therefore the nine stimuli were respectively evaluated by 103 people. As a result of our analysis, nine types of fashion exhibitions were derived by two criteria, namely, (1) the main purpose of an exhibition and (2) the contents of an exhibition. Most fashion exhibitions are held with the goals of aesthetics, sociability, and remembrance. Exhibitions display various fashion products, such as apparel, shoes, bags, and jewellry, fashion photography, as well as various artistic media, such as video, drawings, and installation arts. The nine types of fashion exhibitions were used as a stimulus to quantitatively verify the effectiveness of fashion exhibitions. According to the results of the statistical analyses, customer satisfaction and brand image were significantly different in the fashion exhibition type but the exhibition type does not directly affect the brand image. This study provides a better understanding of the growing influence of factors on the fashion exhibitions and extends the limited research area by verifying the response of fashion exhibition visitors on the marketing level. Moreover, our results provide practical implications for fashion brands to establish successful exhibition marketing strategies.