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There is a 40% increase in fake beauty products detected on Instagram in the US in the weeks leading up the Mother’s Day, a new report has found.
According to “Mother’s Day and Fake Products” released yesterday, May 7 by IP infringement detection service Red Points, 84% of people who had bought a fake gift by mistake would be hesitant about buying from the authentic brand again.
The report’s findings are based on a survey of 1,500 Americans.
Of those surveyed, 16% had bought a Mother’s Day gift that turned out to be counterfeit. Red Points said that additionally, survey results for 40 of its beauty clients said Instagram and Facebook combined account for 30% of all product infringements.
It said this was because Facebook and Instagram have sophisticated advertising tools and now have e-commerce features allowing companies to sell products directly through the platforms.
Laura Urquizu, the CEO of Red Points, said beauty brands need to place a significant effort on combating fakes on social media in order to retain brand value.
“Beauty brands will undoubtedly rely heavily on social media in their Mother's Day marketing activities. With this in mind, we hope that our report helps to shed light on the massive problem of counterfeit beauty products online,” Urquizu said.
The report also found that for almost every question, younger age groups were at greater risk of buying counterfeits through social media.
The results showed that 50% of 18-29 year olds surveyed looked for beauty products on social media, and were more likely to click on an offer from an unknown seller than older participants.
A spokesperson for Instagram told WIPR that it has a strong incentive to aggressively remove counterfeitsand block the individuals responsible from its platform.
Instagram said: “We want our community to have great experiences with businesses on Instagram and we take IP rights, including issues around counterfeiting, very seriously.
“We have devoted more resources to our global notice-and-takedown programme to increase the speed with which we take action on reports from rights owners. We now regularly respond to reports of counterfeit content within one day, and often within a matter of hours.
“Additionally, we continue to proactively fight against bad content, including content that may offer counterfeit goods, with sophisticated spam detection and blocking systems. Because many counterfeiters try to promote their services through spammy behaviour, we’re able to quickly remove this type of content, even without a report,” it said.
Reed Points, Mother’s Day and Fake Products, US, counterfeits, beauty products, Instagram, Facebook
