The massive China based online marketplace has revealed a new strategy to combat its counterfeit products issue.
Alibaba, the e-commerce giant from China, has acknowledged that it is struggling with sellers who are peddling counterfeit products on their website, and it is now hoping that a new strategy that uses special QR codes will help to overcome this problem.
The company will require all products to have their own unique quick response code attached to them.
In order to accomplish this goal, Alibaba has teamed up with Visualead, a company that specializes in QR codes, in order to develop what they are referring to as dotless visual codes. These barcodes look quite similar to traditional quick response codes in that they have dots in each of the corners of the square, however, what makes them different is that the Alibaba verification version allows images to be produced in the centers of the barcodes.
This allows the QR codes to provide a more visual type of marketing effort that could work well with branding strategies.
Using these special QRcodes, customers can scan them when they receive the products that they have ordered. They can do so through the Taobao app from Alibaba. Through the barcode scan, the customer can confirm that it is authentic.
In this way, Alibaba can also take the additional opportunity for promoting its own brand, such as by offering information on its loyalty programs, points, and other types of rewards that it has to offer.
Every one of the codes is unique to the product that is listed and purchased. By scanning it, the code is “burned” so that it can never be used again, explained Nevo Alva, the CEO and founder of Visualead.
Overcoming the counterfeiting problem has been a concern that has been rising ever higher on Alibaba’s priority list. This has particularly been the case since the tremendous IPO, last year, since which it has witness a slide in its share price by 19 percent. Much of the reason for the dropping price has been because of concerns that investors have held over the counterfeiting problem. These new QR codes are part of a broader effort designed to move beyond this struggle.