Amazon have announced the introduction of the Amazon Project Zero in Europe in their efforts to help brands “reduce counterfeit products to zero” amidst the widespread of online fraud on the marketplace.
In March, Amazo debuted the anti-counterfeiting service in the US ahead of the wider rollout. It already saw a significant reduction of counterfeits in the country, where more than 3,000 brands participate in the program.
Amazon Project Zero is built on the wider effort of Amazon enabling brands to take the wheel in reducing the proliferation of fake goods.
The move will see brands in Spain, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom using the three-pronged approach of service to determine and eradicate fake goods.
1. Automated protections
Amazon’s machine learning and automated protections continuously scan sellers’ stores and pro-actively remove suspected counterfeits. Sellers provide Amazon with their logos, trademarks, and other critical data about their brands, and Amazon scan more than 5 billion product listing updates every day to look for suspected counterfeits. Amazon have been testing these automated protections with a number of brands, and on average, their automated protections pro-actively stop 100 times more suspected counterfeit products as compared to what they reactively remove based on reports from brands.
2.A self-service counterfeit removal tool
Previously, Amazon Brands would need to contact Amazon to remove the fraudulent listings. Instead, they can do it now themselves using Amazon’s new self-service tool. This information also feeds into Amazon’s automated protections so they can catch potential counterfeit listings pro-actively in the future.
3.Product serialisation
Product serialisation is a service that allows Amazon to individually scan and confirm the authenticity of every one of a brand’s products that are purchased in Amazon’s stores. The product serialisation service provides a unique code for every unit that is manufactured, and the brand puts these codes on its products as part of its manufacturing process. Every time a product uses the serialisation service is ordered in Amazon’s stores, Amazon scan and verify the authenticity of the purchase. With this product serialisation service, Amazon can now detect and stop counterfeiting for every product unit before it reaches a customer.
There is a cost to this service, but the benefits are 100% surety only genuine product is on Amazon regardless of which channel it arrives their from.
How to sign up for Amazon Project Zero?
Amazon said that the Amazon Project Zero is currently an invite-only experience, and they’re working on to get more brands on board. Brands can join a waitlist and Amazon will inform brands when they can enrol.
Amazon said that they aim to ensure customers always receive authentic goods when shopping on Amazon. They stated that the Amazon Project Zero builds on their long-standing work and investments in the area of tackling counterfeits. It allows brands to work with them, said Amazon, to leverage their combined strengths to move quickly and at scale to drive counterfeits to zero.
2 Responses
Product serialisation sounds like a great tool and I’m sure many brands will make good use of it. BUT I don’t understand how all of this will help with FAKE product reviews? from the sound of it, it may even get worse. As it’s not fraudulent copies that create this problem but BRANDS themselves. They are the ones that buy those fake reviews or even run their own army of fake reviewers… this problem should be addressed in a different way. For example, why not limit the ability to leave reviews to customers who have Amazon account for at least a year and have made 10 purchases? (time frame/order number could be different, but such rules would make it very difficult for scammers to accumulate a large number of fake reviews in a short period of time).
It is a great idea and also helps Amazon against governmental regulation. As the years role by it can be reduced that virtually all brands that sell on Amazon will be a part of project zero, where counterfeits will be reduced to less than %1.
It also helps Amazon in other ways with customer loyalty and trust in Amazon. As market places such as Ebay, Alibaba, Flipkart will get a bad name from consumers as the home of counterfeits and fraud. Where as Amazon will get the name of being the go to place to buy genuine goods and brands.
What will happen is that Amazon will link its product serialization to Aws block chain where there will be a trusted and transparent ledger of manufacture of product to point of sale to delivery.
This new project zero service is a game changer for Amazon and will really benefit Amazon and the consumer for the future.