May 2020

BY Svetlana Ilnitskaya, Director of Customer Strategy at Incopro T he automotive sector faces huge volumes of counterfeit vehicle parts. The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) estimates that more than € 2 billion is lost each year due to counterfeit tires and batteries being sold and offered for sale inside the EU. Particularly alarming is the recurrence of counterfeit airbags within the top search results. Research by Incopro revealed that one website selling counterfeit Honda airbags received 61.24% of its traffic from organic search and placed on the first page of results. Risks posed by fake parts Fake automotive parts do not adhere to stringent safety regulations and put people at great risk. Counterfeit airbags, brake pads, seatbelts and tires all increase the risk of serious injury or death if the vehicle outfitted with them is involved in an accident. Counterfeit airbags have been linked to fatal car accidents. In 2017, a female driver crashed a Kia vehicle into a tree in Highland Park, Dallas Texas, and lost their life after their airbag failed to deploy. It was only two years later that investigators discovered that the airbag module was counterfeit – it was poorly constructed, did not contain a firing mechanism and the main inflatable airbag that should have been present was, instead, replaced by rags. Fake brake pads have also been found to be made of all manner of unsuitable materials, including dried grass dyed to look like rubber. A test conducted by Mercedes-Benz that compared real and fake brake pads showed that cars driving at 100km/h on a dry surface travelled a further 25 metres to come to a complete halt, potentially changing a minor accident into a major collision where human life is put at risk. BMW conducted another test in 2017 where fake brake pads started to smoke and disintegrate almost immediately, indicating that they would completely fail to bring a vehicle to a halt. Identifying dangerous websites within search results Fakes may be easy to identify in person, but it can be harder to do so when purchasing online. Buyers are lulled into a false sense of security when seeing automotive parts displayed on the first page of Google (Fig.1) or other large search engines, reducing the level of scrutiny these products receive. In the research, which was conducted using keyword searches for airbags with and without the names of popular car brand names, showed the first 10 results of a keyword search on Yandex, the Russian search engine, using the term “ купить airbag дешево ” (English translation: “buy airbag cheap”). The website in seventh position was identified as a harmful website. This website generates 61.24% of its traffic from organic search. A product page for a Honda branded airbag on the airbag- master.ru website is shown (Fig.2). The website is advertising a Honda passenger airbag for 7,000 Russian Rubles, equivalent to approximately £89. The retail price of official Honda airbags is closer to £800. The site also offers a discount of 10% for those customers who buy two or more. Furthermore, the product is described in Russian as “ Характеристики : неоригинал ” 28 AFTERMARKET MAY 2020 BUSINESS www.aftermarketonline.net BUYER BEWARE: FAKE CAR PARTS The role of search engines in directing buyers towards counterfeit automotive parts is examined