Online stores selling goods of five popular brands were selected for the experiment, four sites for each brand. Only one of the four sites was official or authorized by the manufacturer – this was verified by the company’s employees before the start of the experiment by conducting test purchases and examinations of goods in each store on the list. The remaining sites sold counterfeit goods.

The respondents were offered to study all the sites and choose among them the one where, in their opinion, original products were sold. Only a third of the 500 men and women aged 14 to 55 surveyed coped with this task. And only a third were able to distinguish between original and fake products by looking at a photograph.

People were shown a choice of two pictures of shoes (casual and sports), watches, glasses and portable speakers. One of them showed original products, while the other showed counterfeits. 68 percent of respondents could not correctly distinguish the original product from the counterfeit: they either considered both to be counterfeit, or both to be original, or confused one with the other.

People were most often mistaken with shoes (81 percent of respondents) and wristwatches (83 percent). 52 percent of respondents could not tell the difference between original athletic shoes and fake ones. The majority of respondents – 63 percent – associate websites that have a brand name in their domain name with official sellers of that brand. But this is far from always the case.

But in this case, how to check whether the seller on the Internet actually sells original products?

To recognize the seller of counterfeit, the expert advises: pay attention to the details of the online store (name, bank account, address), do not be lazy to check the data about it on the site of the tax inspection (nalog.ru). Often the organization listed on the site in the requisites, may not exist at all. In addition, sometimes unscrupulous sellers assign themselves the names and accounts of liquidated companies, or organizations engaged in completely different activities. In addition, the site of the manufacturer of goods usually has a list of official points of sale. You can check whether it has the name of a particular online store.

Well, the easiest way to check the products is to ask the seller. According to another study by the same company, 69% of counterfeit merchants do not hide the origin of the goods.