Amazon has recently announced that it is expanding the Transparency program, an initiative to address counterfeit problems in e-commerce, to India, Canada and Europe. Transparency is aimed at serializing products with a T-shaped QR type code to help in the identification of a counterfeit item.
Vice President of Amazon Customer Trust and Partner Support , Dharmesh Mehta said that counterfeiting, both offline and online, has been a major concern all over the industry. The company seeks the most effective solutions to stop counterfeit through partnerships combining Amazon’s tech innovation with capabilities and sophisticated knowledge of brands.
Transparency was created to provide scalable and simple solutions that empowered brands and Amazon to authenticate products moving within the supply chain and stopping counterfeit goods before they reach the customers, Mehta mentioned.
Apparently, Amazon has taken over two years to offer this service outside of the U.S. market where it initially launched for its own products in March 2017 after which Amazon proceeded to expand Transparency to third-party items. This shows that the growth of Transparency has been very slow. According to FAQ of Amazon, despite Transparency being launched in more markets, the app used by consumers for scanning themselves is only available in the U.S. as of now.
According to sources, there has been decent acceptance of the service till now. Around 4000 brands have enrolled themselves in the program, encompassing 300 million unique codes that have led Amazon to halt over 250,000 counterfeit sales. Basically, the counterfeited sales were the fake versions of original items and brands that were enrolled in the Transparency program.
Smart robotic vacuum cleaner maker Neato Robotics’ chief executive officer, Matt Peterson said the company has built consumer confidence in their products owing to Amazon’s active investment and approach in tools such as Transparency. It prevents products that are inauthentic from ending up in the consumer’s hand.
Source Credit- https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/10/amazon-expands-transparency-anti-counterfeit-codes-to-europe-india-and-canada/