Counterfeit and Black Friday

The BLACK FRIDAY is approaching, one of the commercial appointments that generate the most sales in Spain and it is a good time to remember some of the recommendations to avoid counterfeiting in e-commerce.

Electronic commerce grew by 10,000 million in 2018, 29% more than the previous year.

According to data from the National Commission of Markets and Competition, Internet purchases in 2018 touched 40,000 million euros.

Electronic commerce grows nonstop. In the last year, purchases were made on the Internet for almost 40,000 million euros, 26.9% more than the previous year. A growth that is not new and that seems to still have time to reach its top. In 2017 the increase was 25.7% and in 2016 20.8%.

Purchases skyrocket in online stores like Amazon or Aliexpress, but also in other traditionally physical ones such as El Corte Inglés, Zara or Media Mark. Among the sectors of activity with higher incomes are those related to tourism, such as travel agencies and passenger transport, which add up the main income of this type of trade, followed by the textile industry with the purchase of clothing.

Fourth trimester

The last quarter of the year is especially good for online shopping, probably boosted by Christmas shopping and Black Friday. However, each year, the growth is greater than the previous year. Thus, in the fourth quarter of 2018 Internet purchases totaled 10,820 million euros, 26.9% more than in the last three months of the previous year.

The sectors of activity with the highest income were travel agencies and tour operators such as Edreams or Rumbo, with 11.5% of the total turnover. Followed by air transport, with pages such as Iberia, Ryanair or Norwegian, with 8.6% of revenues, and clothing, which can be purchased on the pages of Mango or Asos, with 6.8% of the total .

Transactions also pointed high in the last quarter by adding more than 205 million transactions, 33.2% more than in 2017. Passenger land transport was the leader in the ranking for sales (7.6%).

As for geographical segmentation, e-commerce websites in Spain have taken 49.2% of revenues in the fourth quarter of 2018. The remaining 50.7% corresponds to purchases originating in Spain made from websites electronic commerce abroad.

These overwhelming figures, however, have failed to solve one of the ballasts of electronic commerce: counterfeits.

Is it safe to buy online? On most websites, yes. There are a large number of controls and certain keys (such as the final "s" in a web address that begins with "https") that facilitate the transparency of virtual servers. Europe and the United States have also advanced in cybersecurity and have narrowed the fence on counterfeiting.

One of the first recommendations is "to have common sense" and to suspect surprisingly cheap merchandise or those that offer limited information.

In addition, another tip is to compare and check, on the official website of the brand, the list of official distributors. When purchased through one of these sellers, quality must be guaranteed, otherwise the customer may claim directly from the manufacturer. On the other hand, when shopping on an e-commerce platform, the procedure will be different.

Certain aspects such as that the packaging is in good condition or that the instructions are in Spanish can be decisive to avoid counterfeiting. While the number of fraudulent products that are distributed “online” has grown with the rise of electronic commerce, many of them are easily identified. Sometimes, you just have to be patient and observer to avoid being deceived.