MarqVision: “Unauthorized sales do serious damage to brand revenue, and hurt trust in companies too”

• MarqVision publishes the “2025 E-commerce Growth Strategy Report,” a survey of 175 company managers
• 8 in 10 “lose 5% or more of annual revenue to unauthorized sales,” with compounding harm such as damage to brand value

MarqVision, an AI-based integrated IP solution company, announced the publication of its “2025 E-commerce Growth Strategy Report,” which presents the results of a survey on unauthorized sales. It is the first time the harm unauthorized sales do to companies, and the actual size of their losses, have been disclosed in detail.

Unauthorized sales are sales by sellers without official authorization who misuse a brand's product images and other assets to distribute products of uncertain authenticity. They are a common distribution risk across industries from fashion and beauty to food, and include both selling products at prices low enough to disrupt the market and editing product information at will in ways that confuse consumers. Products from unclear sources and unhygienic storage can not only disappoint consumers but also pose health risks.

Based on an in-depth survey of 175 company practitioners who have encountered unauthorized sales online, the report analyzes how often unauthorized sales occur, how much damage they do and how companies respond. It found that unauthorized sales seriously threaten brand value and profitability, and that because companies' detection and response processes are reactive, a vicious cycle of lost revenue keeps repeating.

Asked how often they find violations of minimum selling prices or recommended retail prices, 81.7% of respondents said they regularly find unauthorized sales. The result shows how routine unauthorized sales have become: 40.6% find them monthly, 31.4% weekly and as many as 9.7% daily.

The problem is that the damage from unauthorized sales hurts brand image. The types of harm reported were ▲lower brand value (36.6%) ▲damage to official pricing policies (24.2%) ▲lower consumer trust (20.8%) ▲price-matching problems on platforms such as Coupang (18.5%). Harm to brand value and consumer trust together accounts for 57.4%, more than half. Because unauthorized sellers often sell older models or products without official updates, the damage hits not only consumer satisfaction but brand trust directly.

The actual losses were significant, too. 49.1% of respondents said they lose 5–10% of annual revenue to unauthorized sales, and 29.7% said they had lost 10–20%. In all, 79% are losing more than 5% of annual revenue, and more than 9% of companies have lost over 20%, showing how serious the damage is.

Asked how they monitor unauthorized sales, 42.3% said they “actively monitor and take action.” 34.9% said they “monitor but find it hard to respond effectively,” and 19.4% said they “monitor occasionally but don't respond.” While 96.6% of all respondents were aware of unauthorized sales, fewer than half actively respond.

The most common responses were ▲reporting directly to platforms (35.4%) ▲legal action (28.6%) ▲managing their own distribution (25.7%), while 10.3% said they have no means of responding yet, a gap attributed to a lack of specialists, limited resources and low priority.

Satisfaction with those responses was low. Some companies had recovered part of their losses to unauthorized sales, but 66.3% of respondents said their losses are still large, and 6.9% said they “don't know,” showing an urgent need for internal loss management and data monitoring systems.

“This survey confirmed, in the words of practitioners themselves, that unauthorized sales are not a problem for one industry or brand but a threat to the entire distribution structure,” said Mark Lee, CEO of MarqVision. “To fully protect brand value, companies need to go beyond one-off responses, put a systematic strategy in place for real-time monitoring and enforcement, and build up the capabilities to carry it out.”