The meteoric rise of COSRX’s Advanced Snail 96 Mucin Power Essence on social media platforms like TikTok has inadvertently sparked a surge in counterfeit products flooding online marketplaces, raising concerns among consumers about product authenticity and safety.
Originally a cult favorite among skincare enthusiasts, the serum gained unprecedented popularity in 2023, becoming Amazon’s top-selling beauty product early in the year. However, its sudden fame also attracted counterfeiters who swiftly capitalized on the high demand. These counterfeit products, often indistinguishable from the genuine serum in packaging, proliferated on e-commerce platforms like Amazon and TikTok Shop.
Consumers, unaware of the influx of fakes, unknowingly purchased these replicas, sometimes at significantly lower prices than the authentic product’s retail value of $25. The presence of these counterfeits has not only raised practical concerns about the efficacy of the products purchased but also philosophical questions about the nature of trust in online commerce.
Amazon, despite investing over $1 billion in 2023 to combat counterfeit products, struggled to prevent these unauthorized replicas from reaching consumers. The prevalence of third-party sellers on such platforms complicates efforts to ensure product authenticity, as these sellers can list products independently, often without rigorous vetting processes.
The phenomenon underscores broader challenges within modern e-commerce, where the rapid dissemination of product trends on social media can lead to supply shortages and, subsequently, the proliferation of counterfeit goods. In the case of COSRX’s serum, the surge in demand not only triggered opportunistic resale practices but also highlighted the vulnerability of online marketplaces to counterfeiters adept at mimicking popular products.
Experts warn that while dynamic pricing algorithms on platforms may suggest lower prices as a good deal, they can also obscure signals that a product may be counterfeit. This ambiguity further complicates consumers’ ability to discern between genuine and fake products, despite purchasing from reputable online retailers. COSRX is just one example and we can give you a variety of examples where people have found out that what they are getting is a fake version of the product they thought they had ordered. While Amazon, TikTok and others are doing efforts to fight fakes, it looks like that fight is not being won by them so far.
