Where do we draw the line at chasing brands?

Consumers often buy clothing brands that are either perceived as fashionable, trendy or high class. This can be an explanation as to why do people are so obsessive about brands. However, the high price of fashionable brands still remains an issue. How to look cool and trendy but at the same time not be bothered about the cost? Counterfeit products are designed to “solve” this issue. Many students I was speaking with regard to counterfeit products say: “What is wrong with buying counterfeit goods? We buy luxury brand products at low price, that is what we need.” The first thing which should be clear is that it is illegal to purchase counterfeit goods. What are counterfeit products? They are goods, often of inferior quality, made or sold without the brand owner's authorization. What is wrong about this? Well, the answer is multifaceted, as counterfeit products affect many stakeholders. For right holders rising counterfeiting trade increases revenue loses; for governments, counterfeit means lost tax revenues; for consumers counterfeiting and piracy continue to pose a serious threat to human health and safety. Counterfeiters while seeking to maximise profits have no interest in ensuring the quality or safety of their products. How counterfeit products can affect customers? Here are few examples: Counterfeit lithium-ion laptop batteries pose significant risk of extreme heat, self-igniting, and exploding. The report from the UK charity Electrical Safety First states that “faulty electrical products are the cause of more than 7,000 house fires a year in the UK. The report shows results from tests of a number of counterfeit products, including phone chargers and hair straighteners, many of which were found to have posed a serious safety risk.” Counterfeit prescription drugs may not contain the active ingredient or may lead to accidental overdose. According to Interpol, “some fake medicines have been found to contain mercury, arsenic, rat poison, or cement”. According to the World Health Organization “some counterfeit drugs contain real antibiotics or antivirals but at a much lower dosage than listed on the product label. It's not enough to fully treat the disease, and it can give pathogens a chance to mutate and spread”. Counterfeit cosmetics can cause severe skin reactions and deceases. In 2018, the Local Government Association in London found hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of counterfeit beauty products of well-known brands such as MAC, Chanel etc. Some of beauty products contained mercury (a highly toxic chemical even in small doses). These are just a few examples of health and safety risks which often can be caused by counterfeit goods, as these goods are not subjected to the rigorous safety testing. Regrettably, people’s desire to buy luxury brands in order to communicate “social status” brings them to the point that they buy fake products, even knowing that there can be health and safety risks.The latest Intellectual Property Crime Threat Assessment 2022, produced jointly between Europol and the European Union Intellectual Property Office, reveals that import of counterfeit and pirated goods reached EUR 119 billion in 2019, representing 5.8 % of all goods entering the EU, according to the latest data from the OECD and EUIPO. The main origin of fake products coming to the EU is China, UAE and Turkey. For example: nearly 700,000 counterfeit shampoo products were seized at a huge police operation in Istanbul, Turkey in 2020.How to identify an original from a counterfeit product and make sure you are on the right path? There are some signs, that may help customers to identify counterfeit products, for example unrealistically huge discounts and very cheap sale prices, grammatical and spelling mistakes, fake websites, poor quality of products, flawed fonts and logos, no contact details etc. However, even absence of these worrying signs is not a fool proof guarantee that you buy a genuine product. For example: a writer for The Atlantic US newspaper paid USD 925 for a Canada Goose jacket that the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and Canada Goose later confirmed was fake.The counterfeit market is huge and has been rising steadily in the last few years. Just a simple example which shows the size of counterfeit market: the estimated number of counterfeit Swiss watches produced annually is 40 million. This number of counterfeit watches is twice as big as the volume of genuine Swiss watches (“made in Switzerland”) produced within the same period of time. Only in one police raid in October 2022 in Oxford Street in London police found £215,000 worth of goods including counterfeit Rolex watches, Apple products etc.There is also one important point to keep in mind when you buy fake products, namely purchasing counterfeit goods means supporting criminal activities, such as forced labor or human trafficking. In addition, purchases of counterfeits on illegal websites put customers at the risk of identity theft and credit card fraud. This happens when buyers provide personal information as well as bank card details at a counterfeit merchant’s website. It is required to develop plans on raising public awareness on counterfeit issue as well as about the risks associated with buying fake products. There must be some alternative methods on delivering this information to public. As it was shown above, the counterfeit market continues to grow steadily despite all the measures that the Government has been undertaking to tackle the problem. It follows that all involved stakeholders should also play an active role in combating the counterfeit problem.