"The worrying part is, it's not because they're better products, or because they're more innovative or a better purchase experience. It's because they're often faster, cheaper, more visible online, and increasingly sophisticated replicas. While brands fight each other for market share, counterfeiters quietly capture the surge in demand and take away sales and revenue from the original brands"
Why Counterfeiters are more dangerous than Competitors
- Invest nothing in R&D or quality ingredients/materials
- Ignore safety and quality regulations
- Avoid taxes and compliance costs
- Piggyback on your marketing investment and redirect your traffic
- Exploit and damage your brands reputation instead of building their own
Why It Matters Now More Than Ever
The explosion of global e-commerce and one click check out has dramatically changed counterfeiting tactics. Counterfeit products can easily reach consumers directly through online marketplaces, social commerce, social media, fake apps and deliver direct-to-consumer shipping with unprecedented speed.
A fake product no longer needs to hide on a shelf in a store or physical market. It just needs to appear in search results, or in social media feeds, before the genuine product.
The worrying part is, it’s not because they’re better products, or because they’re more innovative or a better purchase experience. But because they’re often faster, cheaper, more visible online, and increasingly sophisticated replicas. While brands fight each other for market share, counterfeiters quietly capture the surge in demand and take away sales and revenue from the original brands.
Changing the way you Think about Competition
- Pricing models and movements
- Product launches – entry markets, target audiences and market share growth
- Advertising spend and success
- Market share YOY growth
However, to ensure brands see the full picture some of this budget could instead be devoted to tracking and removing:
- Counterfeit prevalence and infrastructure such as fake social media accounts and apps
- Removing online listing volumes that redirect genuine sales
- Tracking geographic counterfeit hotspots ahead of product launches
- Building evidence of repeat infringers and known networks for faster removals
- Tracking and responding to customer complaints linked to fake products
- Preventing revenue leakage attributable to counterfeits and dupes
Improving Competitive Strategy of Brands
"Counterfeit sales represent much more than just lost purchases. They represent customers who recognised and intended to buy your brand, and ended up buying an imitation. This has a significant impact on brand trust, and therefore brand value and reputation"
Want to see how SnapDragon’s AI can protect your brand?
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We would love to hear from you, show you what’s possible, and get you protected straight away.
