Why counterfeit products thrive on Amazon

Millions of fraudulent products is an inevitable result of a scale-at-all-costs business strategy

Counterfeit shoes.
(Image credit: Illustrated | rubirub/iStock, PCH-Vector/iStock)

As a lot of people probably won't be terribly surprised to learn, Amazon has something of a counterfeiter problem.

The Washington Post reported last week that the counterfeiters Amazon has caught amount to just 0.1 percent of its product pages. But that's still a staggering 17.6 million pages, and it's only the ones they've caught. Cheap knockoffs of low quality haunt the site. And while plenty are inconsequential luxury items, a fair amount are items where quality matters for people's well-being, like baby food.

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Jeff Spross

Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.