Interestingly, “Amazon Basics” has no counterfeitting problem. It is not that Amazon can’t fix counterfeiting, they just don’t care unless it is their own brand.

At some point this crosses the line into anti-trust territory.

I imagine I could make some fake Duracell batteries and list them on Amazon with the Amazon folks (if they cared) thinking this was 'seller #143' also selling the same stuff. However, if I was to make some fake 'genuine Amazon Basics batteries' and then list them on Amazon I might not just blend in so easily. Someone at Amazon or even a customer might think 'where were these sourced as it wasn't through Amazon' for the gig to soon be up.

There are other vectors for counterfeiting own brand products but you would have to be a supplier. In normal retail 'own brand' products can be sourced from many suppliers. If you are selling ready meals then the exterior pack could be provided by the supermarket with that being consistent. Meanwhile the contents could come from one of many industrial units at one of many suppliers. In this way 'co-mingling' is possible. In the UK we had a little problem a few years ago where 'own brand' ready meals were full of horsemeat. The products themselves were 'legit' but the contents were not.

I would say that Amazon Basics are vulnerable to this type of fakery that goes on further up the food chain. This is fully possible with commodity items such as batteries. As per the UK horsemeat problem there is a serious reputation risk if this happens, terrifying the customers this way is a bigger existential threat to the brand than any 'anti trust' laws.

I think the difference is that in that case Amazon controls the entire chain. They have the batteries manufactured and plan stock themselves. For market place items on Amazon (which are now most items) someone else just rents a bin in their warehouse, ships stuff to it and gives Amazon a description to show on their website. Amazon in that case is more like Airbnb for goods or a more automated eBay.

It would be interesting to see counterfeit numbers for items sold by Amazon itself vs by someone else on Amazon. Anecdotally I've never had an issue with stuff sold by Amazon itself and steer away from our vendors if possible.

Never really thought about it that way, but interesting none the less. I have no idea if it's intentional but I definitely lean towards the Amazon branded stuff when it's an option for the fear of counterfeits.