Product counterfeiting is becoming a headache for Amazon. In recent times, many third-party sellers have been using Amazon’s reach to sell counterfeit and pirated items.
Well-known brands including the likes of Birkenstock and Mercedes Benz have complained and called out Amazon to bring this issue under control.
According to CNBC, “Amazon for the first time has acknowledged sales of counterfeits and pirated items as a risk in its annual earnings report to investors and the US securities and exchange commission.”
In an attempt to curb the menace, the largest ecommerce marketplace is offering a new service called Transparency.
What is Amazon Transparency?
Transparency is a product based credibility service from Amazon that helps businesses protect their brands and customers from counterfeit.
Why Transparency?
Proactive Counterfeit Protection
Amazon has introduced transparency checks to proactively curb counterfeits of transparency-enabled products from reaching customers.
Authenticity Verification by Customers
Amazon Transparency checks gives all customers the opportunity to verify and validate the genuineness of any Transparency-enabled product.
Customer Transparency
Amazon Transparency allows you to communicate unit level product information with your customers as well as product manufacturing date, manufacturing place, enhanced product information.
How Transparency works
To effectively ensure the genuineness of all products and curtail the proliferation of counterfeits so that brands and customers can be protected, users will have to first of all enroll their products and apply Transparency codes on them.
Amazon scans the transparency codes of all products to ensure that only original and valid products are shipped to buyers. When customers are buying any products on Amazon, they only need to use their Transparency app to verify the originality of products irrespective of where and when they make their purchase.
How to enroll on the Transparency Program
To enroll on the Transparency program, users must demonstrate capacity in authenticating themselves as original brand owners of any product in their merchandise. They also need a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) on all their products. An example is having a UPC or EAN barcodes for the merchandise. Finally, they must be able to apply unique Transparency codes on every unit product they create.
How Customers can Authenticate a Product Using the Transparency App
To verify the genuineness of a product, customers will have to first of all download the transparency app. Then at anytime a customer wants to buy a product he or she simply scans the Transparency code on the product. The transparency app validates the product for the customer and finally shows the unit level-information of the product (if it is original or fake).
