Amazon Is A Fake Paradise Consumer Sentiment?

Since its establishment, the platform has attracted millions of third party sellers. By 2016, third party sellers had occupied half of Amazon's products.

Amazon's sales reached $135 billion in 2017, and the figure is expected to reach $259 billion by 2020, according to Credit Suisse.

With the growth of Amazon, the negative news is frequent. The most important thing is the problem of counterfeit goods and goods infringement.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, in October 2017, Daimler AG's lawyers pointed out in a lawsuit against Amazon that Amazon had the suspicion of promoting the sale of counterfeit goods and infringing products, because its platform lacked effective supervision measures for counterfeit goods.

In fact, Amazon is not the only supplier of a fake electronic business platform. Its competitors eBay, Alibaba and so on are also deeply criticized for fake goods.

But Amazon is the largest in the US.

The platform has a huge impact on business development, and many world famous brands have launched a denunciation of Amazon, which suggests that Amazon has fuelled the flow of counterfeit products.

The major brands and investigators also pointed out that Amazon and other e-commerce peers have taken almost no measures to prevent the sale of counterfeit products.

It is difficult to safeguard their rights and interests in the Internet world.

43% is fake.

The sale of counterfeit products is hot.

According to the International Trademark Association statistics, the total volume of piracy and counterfeit products in the world in 2013 amounted to 461 billion US dollars, accounting for 2.5% of all trade volume.

The Association says it will reach 1 trillion dollars by 2020.

In January 2018, the US government accountability Bureau (GAO) launched an investigation into the fake situation of the electronic business platform. Nearly 50 products were purchased on Amazon, WAL-MART, eBay, Sears, new egg net and other e-commerce sites, including brand shoes Yeti travel cups, cosmetics, mobile phone chargers, etc., and sent to the manufacturer for authenticity testing. The results were amazing: nearly 43% of these products were counterfeit.

It is reported that in 2016, the US Customs and border protection intercepted about 32 thousand counterfeit and shoddy products valued at about $1 billion 400 million.

GAO pointed out that although the number of seizures could not reflect the whole picture of the problem, the number of counterfeit products seized by customs gradually increased, which means that more and more fake goods were flowing to the United States, which made it difficult for the US government to curb the flow of counterfeit goods.

Moreover, with the increasing sophistication of counterfeiting technology and packaging technology, it is even hard for manufacturers to tell the true and false products.

Fake paradise

GAO also pointed out that counterfeiters "use the third party platform to disguise the legitimacy of products and get consumers' favor," the third party platform is a paradise for counterfeiters.

GAO did not disclose the source of its fake products detected.

Another consumer protection group, Counterfeit Report, pointed out that they helped copyright owners remove 34000 fake products sold in Amazon.

According to Counterfeit Repor's report, the proportion of counterfeit goods on Amazon website is about 13%, while eBay is 61%.

EBay spokesman said in a statement that consumers can safely shop on their platform. "We have established partnerships with copyright owners, law enforcement officers and government officials to ensure consumers' shopping experience."

Amazon has clearly pointed out that "sellers are strictly prohibited from selling counterfeit products". Once sellers are found to violate this principle, they will be deprived of their sales rights, withholding their sales amount and destroying their inventory in the Amazon warehouse.

A spokeswoman for Amazon said, "in order to detect bad sellers and potential counterfeit products, we have invested heavily in machine learning and automation systems.

Our system automatically continues to scan large amounts of data to search for potential counterfeit products.

Counterfeit manufacturers: size brands eat

It is noteworthy that not only big brands are plagued by counterfeit products, but many companies have told the media that they have found counterfeit products of their own brands in the Amazon, and their income and reputation have been affected. Fuse Chicken, a maker of high-end mobile charging products, is one of them.

More than a year ago, employees of Fuse Chicken noticed that someone on Amazon had sold the counterfeit product of the brand, and some consumers left review saying, "the quality of the product is very bad, and it is broken in a week".

In this regard, Fuse Chicken complained to Amazon many times, and repeatedly reported to Amazon all kinds of counterfeit products, hope Amazon does not sell products without Fuse Chicken related products, but Amazon did not respond, and Fuse Chicken also learned that Amazon has directly purchased Fuse Chicken products from third parties, "because the purchase price is much lower."

After months of complaints, Fuse Chicken sent a lawyer's letter to Amason, hoping to get help. Amason still did not respond. Finally, Fuse Chicken took Amason to court.

Fuse Chicken chief executive Jon Fawcett said: "all measures launched by Amazon are just smoke bombs, so that people feel they are acting, and in fact, they have done nothing."

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Fake problem can't be solved.

Cosby of Counterfeit Report points out that preventing counterfeit products from selling is the responsibility of the manufacturer, not the electronic business platform. For manufacturers, monitoring the relevant products on the e-commerce website everyday is very cost consuming.

Another investigator, Rob Holmes, founder and CEO of IP Cybercrime, has also pointed the key to the problem of counterfeiting to the electronic business platform.

Rob Holmes said: "the larger the scale of these e-commerce platforms, Amazon and Alibaba, the bigger the problem."

Wade and Shepard, a writer and journalist, pointed out that "in 2015, Amazon began to push more Chinese businessmen to sell their products to the US and European markets, not only opening up the western market for Chinese manufacturers, but also pave the way for fake manufacturers and cheaters, making big brands compete with the infringing products under the same page."

Behr, a Phillips Nizer law firm in New York, said that as a partner of some brands, Amazon and eBay were "not that bad". They beat counterfeit sellers very quickly, and some brands were selling their own websites overseas, and the sales situation was not very good.

"If you are a brand owner, you must be vigilant," Behr said. "Register the copyright, if you can, hire investigators to be responsible for the search of counterfeit products on the website. After all, combating fake goods can not rely solely on the platform of the electronic business."

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