Deterring counterfeit products through e-platform store-brand strategy
研究电商平台引入自有品牌如何通过改变零售商事前激励来遏制其销售欺骗性假冒产品，发现该策略的有效性取决于正品生产成本和自有品牌质量，且平台未必总是采用此策略。
Online retail offers unparalleled convenience but also increases consumers’ exposure to counterfeit products. This study investigates how an e-commerce platform’s store-brand introduction strategy can deter counterfeit sales when a retailer sells both genuine products and deceptive counterfeits. We find that the effectiveness of this strategy depends on the authentic product’s unit production cost and the store-brand product’s quality. Without a store-brand product, the retailer is incentivized to sell counterfeits when the authentic product’s production cost is high. When a store-brand product is introduced, this incentive persists only if the store-brand product is of low quality and the authentic product’s cost remains high. However, the platform may not always introduce a store-brand product even when it effectively deters counterfeits, as intensified competition can offset potential profit gains. We find that launching a store-brand product is optimal for the platform when the manufacturer’s production cost is sufficiently high. Interestingly, the retailer’s total demand can increase in some cases despite facing store-brand competition. This study is among the first to conceptualise platform store-brand introduction as a proactive anti-counterfeiting mechanism, showing how it deters deceptive counterfeits by altering the retailer’s incentives ex ante rather than relying solely on post hoc enforcement.