subject: Ways To Bring Down Grey Market Sales [print this page] The internet has made it easy for grey market to flourish and cause harm to the original brand reputation. Grey market goods are mostly illegal, but are sold outside the normal distribution line by organizations that have little or no association with the original manufacturer. Owing to the nature of this market, it becomes difficult to trace the precise sales and at times the source. However, if you search for your choicest fragrance, cosmetics or any other products online, you find multiple websites selling the same. At one glance, the choice appears simple where you simply need to choose the cheapest one.
On second thoughts, its not that simple. Counterfeiting and grey market products are scattered all over the internet. This means there is a high chance that a cosmetic or lifestyle good you choose might be damaged or spurious. Hence, one needs to exercise some caution while buying them. If the price appears too good to be true, then there is surely something wrong with the product. The question remains on how to combat grey market sales and its negative side effects.
Industry Solutions to Combat Grey Market Sales
Grey market goods create disruptions with original and authentic distributors in the sales channel. Unfortunately, these authorized partners lose revenue to heavy grey market sales. Their manufacturers need to look at ways to counter grey market sales channels.
Today companies specializing in online brand protection solutions have come up with SaaS based software solutions that help you to combat grey marker sales. The solution monitors the open market on an ongoing basis for buy/sell listings of goods and part numbers using high-end search agents. These search agents can track detailed market information from a wide selection of market types that includes the following:-
* Franchise and large distribution websites
* Independent and gray market web sites
* Trade boards
* Auction sites
* B2C sites
* B2B sites
This software helps in delivering data directly through a website to the user in a complete, multi-dimensional market intelligence format. From this format users can get personalized dashboards, custom report views and create user formatted export files. All the relevant inputs are available and used within a perceptive interface. This helps the investigators to manage and develop case histories, assess evidence and understand better the link between partners, suspect companies and other associated contacts.
Though the internet has acted as a catalyst to promote online trade it has also led to fraudulent activities. Investing in appropriate brand protection solutions will protect your products from distribution in the grey market.
