How to find and act on gray-market and unauthorized sellers on major marketplaces yourself

Gray-market (unauthorized) sales aren’t just a matter of a few individual sellers discounting products. They’re an operational risk that directly affects a brand’s pricing policy, distribution and sales structure, and consumer trust.

When sellers outside official distribution sell your products without permission, price gaps between marketplaces widen, and the list-price policy and price competitiveness your brand worked hard to build start to collapse. When prices vary wildly from platform to platform, shoppers start asking, “Why is the same product more expensive here?”, and that can eventually erode trust in the brand as a whole.

Reselling can also do serious damage to relationships with official distributors. Official sellers who stick to list prices can’t help feeling that the brand is letting unauthorized sellers get away with it. That can lead to frustrated official sellers, partners leaving and confusion across distribution channels.

That’s why brands need a system to identify and respond to gray-market sales from the start. If you haven’t adopted an automated system yet, you should at least run a basic manual monitoring process.

How to monitor gray-market and unauthorized sellers manually

Many brands start looking for a response after dealing with price swings, lower visibility for official channels and falling sales caused by unauthorized sellers. Most begin by monitoring manually before adopting an automated solution. Here are the main manual monitoring methods teams use in practice:

1. Build a search keyword list

• Build a keyword list combining your brand name, product names, model names, and terms like “genuine” and “genuine discount.”
• Examples: brand name + product name, product name + discount, model name + genuine. Run these searches repeatedly on the main sales platforms.

2. Search each major marketplace regularly

Use your keywords to search major marketplaces such as Naver, Coupang, 11st, Gmarket and Auction every day. In the results, look for signs of reselling and unauthorized sellers: unusually low prices, incorrect product information, stolen official brand images, missing seller information and so on.

• Where to search: Naver, Coupang, 11st, Gmarket, Auction and others
• How often: at least once a day
• What to capture
  • Selling price
  • Seller information
  • Product page details, including product images and product information
  • Product specifics such as size, country of origin and expiration date

3. Analyze sellers and organize the data internally

Once you’ve found gray-market listings, it’s important to organize the information systematically and manage it internally. Start by recording the seller name, product link, price, shipping origin and other details in a spreadsheet. This helps you spot sellers who keep reappearing or patterns concentrated on particular platforms, making it easier to identify which targets to prioritize.

Beyond basic prices and URLs, we recommend noting the images and copy used on product pages, as well as phrases that could confuse shoppers, such as “genuine discount” or “official distributor.” It also helps to check and record whether the seller is one of your official distribution partners, which will be useful later for internal communication and reporting.

4. Take action using platform reporting tools

When it’s time to act, use the reporting tools each marketplace provides. You can file reports backed by concrete evidence: the URLs, prices, seller information and screenshots you’ve collected.

Reports can generally be filed on grounds such as IP infringement, consumer protection violations or violations of e-commerce law. Since a price difference alone often isn’t enough for enforcement, it’s best to state clearly in your report, for example, whether the listing infringes IP your brand owns, such as trademarks or images; whether it could mislead shoppers into thinking an unauthorized seller is official; and whether it violates e-commerce laws. Being specific makes reports more effective.

The limits and burden of manual monitoring

Manual monitoring is a necessary step early on, but in practice it comes with operational constraints:

• The work is repetitive and draining, and uses up a disproportionate amount of resources.
• Coverage is limited, so it’s hard to see the full picture of reselling and price changes at a glance.
• Covering overseas marketplaces, with their many languages and country-specific search terms, is practically impossible.
• Relying on manual work raises the risk of missed listings, misjudgments and delayed responses.

Manual monitoring eventually hits a wall. Time- and resource-draining work, the difficulty of responding in real time and endless repetition can hold back a brand’s operations and growth. At that point, brands start asking: “Should we hire more people to monitor?” or “Would an outside solution be more efficient?”

Sustained gray-market response takes more than manual work. In our next post, we’ll look at the role automated solutions can play in gray-market monitoring and the changes they can bring to how a brand operates, with concrete examples.

Curious about AI-based strategies for tackling unauthorized sales? Don’t miss our next post.