With an increase in the number of dishonest sellers and fake products, the protection of a site and buyers necessitate a proactive, preemptive approach.
Amazon realized one of the means of eradicating fakes. Its project was named Project Zero. It urged brands to register in a unique catalog and provide data on their production, logos, trademarks, photo products, and other important information, including special goods codes.
All these instruments help business to prove that it produces and sells original goods. Automated Amazon system scans adding to the site goods. It compares them with ones that are represented in the Project Zero catalog, identifying among them as suspicious and that one should be subjected to a greater level of scrutiny. If the commodity code doesn't match with the producer code, the company can examine the product of such a seller more attentively or just delete it without any additional warnings.
It is possible to use automated tools, machine learning, and a set of appropriate criteria that might indicate suspicion of the fake product. For instance, a low price that is much below the market average is considered suspicious. Among other factors, requiring more attention to the product can become non-unique photos, a significant number of poor reviews, etc.
Marketplaces can explicitly prohibit sales of counterfeits in the agreement with sellers (SLA — Service Level Agreement). Moreover, this document can include specific forbiddance on counterfeit selling and a subsequent blocking of a seller, complete abandonment in the future, and imposing penalty clauses.
SLA is implanted in the
IT platform where the marketplace works. It helps partially or entirely control the merchants' work with the minimal interference of collaborators on the marketplace. The goods moderation and suppliers- control functions are provided by such systems as PIM (Product Information Management) and MAS (suppliers cabinet). Ideally, it must be a unified system with a seamless module integration.
One more institutional step is creating the guarantee program only for sellers of original products and a rough reaction on the activity of fake goods sellers.
Stimulating programs for buyers that inform them about counterfeit on the platform can become an additional method to cope with this negative phenomenon.
Also, the marketplaces can create special conditions to support diligent sellers that reveal the source of goods and confirm their legitimacy.
Producers also have to join in the struggle for the original products. At a minimum, they can spread information about the authorized sellers. At the maximum – to design their protection programs against counterfeit goods.