Unbox Real Happiness: 10 Tips to Give the Gift of Authenticity this Holiday Season
Santa isn’t the only one making a list this year. Counterfeiters are rounding up the holiday season’s most popular gift ideas – from toys and electronics to perfumes and sneakers – and producing fake versions to try to rip you off.
Fake products carry more than just the disappointment of getting something inauthentic and substandard; they can pose real threats to your health and safety. For example, fake cosmetics often contain arsenic, mercury, or lead; impostor car seats and helmets will fail standard safety tests, and knock-off batteries can cause fires.
Just how big is this problem? On average, the worldwide trade in counterfeit and pirated goods amounts to over $500 billion each year—and more than 50 percent of consumers believe they may have purchased a fake item when holiday shopping. Moreover, most consumers report purchasing those counterfeit items online.
This year, online shopping is expected to be consumers’ preferred holiday shopping method, with Adobe predicting a 2.5% growth in online sales between the beginning of November and the end of December. Couple that trend with consumers’ reported desire to cut back on holiday spending, and you have the perfect storm for counterfeiters ready to peddle cheap, dangerous, and fake products across your favorite e-commerce platforms.
While online platforms are taking steps to prevent counterfeits from ever reaching their sites, consumers should be vigilant, too, to avoid getting duped.
Of course, the best way to protect yourself from counterfeiters is to educate yourself about counterfeiters. So this holiday season, learn to shop smart with these ten tips:
