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Spot the difference: the invincible business of counterfeit goods
Article

Spot the difference: the invincible business of counterfeit goods

Selling cheap fakes of a successful product makes horribly good business sense. Is there any way to stop it?

Alice Sherwood
The Guardian, 2022
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

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  • Engaging

Recommendation

Product, price, place and promotion – these are the classic “four Ps” of modern branding. Is the product functional, and is the packaging good? Is the price reasonable? Is distribution in place? Do you have the means to promote the product, through advertising and an effective sales staff? A hundred years ago, that’s all you needed. But with globalization, the list expanded to promise, personality and purpose. That’s when things got more complicated for brands, but infinitely easier for counterfeiters. Alice Sherwood’s intriguing article describes the good business sense of counterfeit products.

Take-Aways

  • By the early 1900s, branding involved the “four Ps” – product, place, packaging and promotion. Now, modern branding also requires promise, personality and purpose.
  • Branding based on intangibles makes counterfeiting easier.
  • Counterfeit sales have surged over the last 20 years, and so have seizures by companies such as React, an anti-counterfeit organization.

About the Author

Alice Sherwood is the author of Authenticity: Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfeit Culture (2022). She’s a non-executive director of Ridgeway Information, a UK-based research and analysis firm. She’s also a senior visiting research fellow at King’s Policy Institute, King’s College London.

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