The key takeaways
• Expectations matter. A customer expecting authenticity may judge the genuine brand by the counterfeits' performance.
• Seller counts miss the impact. A small number of sellers can intercept substantial genuine demand and put customers at risk.
• Verify what arrives. An authentic-looking product page cannot establish what every seller will deliver.
Two purchases with different expectations.
Someone knowingly choosing a replica understands that the genuine manufacturer did not make it. An unsuspecting buyer may never recognize that they purchased a counterfeit; and may turn a poor experience into a lasting opinion of the genuine brand.
That distinction does not make a knowingly purchased counterfeit products safe. It explains why deception creates a different threat to brand trust.
What the UK research tells us.
The UK Intellectual Property Office’s Wave 5 research surveyed 5,057 UK adults in June and July 2025. Published in September 2026, it examines reported behavior; it is not a physical test of 5,000 purchases. [1]
- 17.2%
- 30.7%
The issue reaches everyday categories.
Buyers reporting an inadvertent counterfeit purchase in the preceding year: [1, table 3.26]
|
Product category |
Share of category buyers |
|
Toys |
8.8% |
|
Electricals |
7.0% |
|
Beauty and hygiene |
5.0% |
Risk is not linear.
Platforms like Amazon and Walmart, as a result of their unified catalog structure (rotating buy box), unprecedented levels of platform trust, fulfillment scale, and consumer expectations, can be a more acute threat landscape, because the impact to the consumer is greater when they have deep expectations on quality and product authenticity. The very element that makes Amazon and Walmart such successful marketplaces in the U.S..
Fewer sellers can still mean greater consumer harm.
We hear this a lot from brands. We don't have very many bad actors offering our products on Amazon.
Even if this is true, which it almost never is, when a brand finds fewer counterfeit sellers on Amazon or Walmart than elsewhere, those sellers can cause disproportionate harm. Precisely because of the high consumer expectations. In addition, the buy box provides a lot of anonymity, with bad actors going undetected for days or even weeks. Where and how a counterfeit is sold matters when weighing the consequences.
Brands must assess each infringer but also where that infringer is selling:
• Revenue exposure.
How much demand intended for genuine products could this seller capture? A deliberate replica buyer might never have bought the original; an unsuspecting buyer already chose the brand.
• Damage to trust.
Could the customer attribute poor quality or failure to the genuine manufacturer, leading to complaints, negative reviews, or lost repeat purchases?
• Consumer safety.
Could a buyer rely on the genuine product’s expected safety without suspecting a substitution? Product defects and use determine physical risk; a trusted setting can conceal the hazard.
When consumers have a high expectation of authenticity and quality, as they do on Amazon and Walmart, the reputational damage inflicted on the brand when a counterfeit is discovered is catastrophic.
Sources
[1] UK Intellectual Property Office, Counterfeit
goods research Wave 5. Published 17 September 2026. Report and supporting tables 3.25 and
3.26. UK findings are not US prevalence estimates.
[2] Amazon, Maximize your sales potential with the
Featured Offer.
10 April 2026.
[3] Walmart Marketplace, 5 tips to manage your
pricing strategy