A counterfeit or hijacked purchase doesn't just cost money twice — it can void warranties, trigger denied insurance claims, create compliance gaps, and pass liability straight through to your own customers, often without a single warning sign before something fails.

Marketplace procurement risks for enterprises aren't limited to a single product line — they stem from the open-marketplace structure itself, and they can expose a business to real financial and legal liability long before anyone notices a problem. In short: any enterprise sourcing recurring, high-volume categories through an open online marketplace is exposed to counterfeit products, listing hijacking, and the cost and liability fallout that follows, regardless of how reputable the platform itself is. Amazon Business has become the default move for a huge share of corporate purchasing. It's fast, it's familiar, and checkout doesn't feel any different than ordering a phone case at home. For low-stakes items, that convenience is worth it. 

But there's a marketplace structure sitting underneath the familiar interface that most buyers never think about. For certain product categories, that structure creates real financial and legal exposure for the businesses buying through it. And it's not limited to any one type of product. 

This isn't a shot at Amazon. It's a look at how the marketplace actually works, what's been documented across several product categories, and why some companies choose to buy those categories through vetted supplier agreements instead. 

For categories where product authenticity, warranty coverage, and safety certifications matter, CoreTrust gives members access to pre-negotiated agreements with key suppliers, creating a more accountable path to authentic OEM products. 

How Does Amazon's Marketplace Actually Work? 

Amazon's open-marketplace model allows multiple third-party sellers to sell against a single product listing, which means a buyer often has no way of knowing which seller actually shipped the item they received. That structure — not any single bad actor — is the root cause of marketplace procurement risk. 

Amazon's catalog runs on one product, one listing. Every item gets a unique ID, called an ASIN. In theory, that keeps the catalog clean: one listing per product, no duplicates. 

In practice, it means multiple sellers can attach their own inventory to the exact same listing. Search for a specific part or product, and a buyer isn't looking at one seller's product with a known supply chain. They're looking at a single product page that any number of third-party sellers can sell against, and they often never see who actually shipped what they received. 

That's the mechanism behind two related problems: counterfeit listings and ASIN hijacking. 

Counterfeiting is what it sounds like. A seller lists a fake version of a branded product, sometimes with the same packaging and photos as the real thing. 

Hijacking is when an unauthorized seller attaches their own offer to a listing that already has trust and sales history built into it, usually a counterfeit or an inferior product, priced just low enough to win the Buy Box. The buyer has no way of knowing the product they're getting isn't the one described by the reviews and photos on the page. 

Which Product Categories Face the Highest Marketplace Procurement Risks? 

The highest marketplace procurement risks concentrate in categories with high resale value, safety certification requirements, or strong brand-driven demand — print consumables, batteries and electronics, automotive and industrial parts, and personal protective equipment (PPE) are the most frequently documented. 

Print consumables get talked about a lot because the numbers are so stark. A widely cited 2019 study found roughly 60% of toner cartridges sold on Amazon tested as counterfeit, and Canon, Epson, and HP have all taken formal legal action against sellers over the years. But toner is really just the easiest example to point to. The same pattern shows up in categories where the stakes are a lot higher than a bad print job. 

Batteries and electronics. This is where counterfeiting stops being an annoyance and starts being a genuine fire risk. In January 2026, Amazon and UL, the safety certification body, jointly sued a group of e-bike and e-scooter sellers for putting fake UL safety marks on their products, which let unsafe lithium-ion battery systems pass as certified. The court issued a permanent injunction in July 2026. That case caught one operation with seven listings, on a marketplace with hundreds of millions of them. Separately, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has issued outright stop-use warnings for battery chargers sold on Amazon after receiving reports of fire and burn injuries, and Amazon has faced class-action lawsuits alleging it knowingly sold fraudulent lithium-ion batteries misrepresented as safe. Years earlier, Apple sued a company for selling counterfeit iPhone and iPad chargers on Amazon after independent testing found the fakes could deliver a lethal shock. 

Automotive and industrial parts. Amazon has also been sued over counterfeit Mercedes-Benz parts sold on its marketplace, described in the filing as fire and electrocution risks sold at a steep discount to lure buyers who believed they were getting the genuine article. A study funded by the Center for Advanced Purchasing Studies found the same pattern extending into electronic components, aircraft parts, and industrial equipment more broadly, not just consumer goods. 

Personal protective equipment. During COVID, counterfeit PPE flooded online marketplaces fast enough that federal agencies opened dedicated enforcement operations against it. That's the same category a lot of businesses restock routinely for workplace safety compliance. 

Amazon's own 2023 Brand Protection Report says it blocked more than 800,000 seller accounts before they could list a single product and stopped more than 6 million counterfeit products from reaching customers. Those numbers cut both ways. They show real enforcement effort, and they show the volume of the problem Amazon is fighting in the first place. A Wall Street Journal investigation separately found thousands of items for sale on Amazon that had been declared unsafe, banned, or deceptively labeled by federal regulators, including products that violated the site's own stated policies. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates counterfeit goods make up roughly 3.3% of all global trade, worth around $509 billion a year, and platforms like Amazon are one of the primary channels that trade moves through. 

Where Does Amazon's Seller Vetting Actually Stop? 

Amazon's seller vetting verifies identity — not brand authorization. That gap is exactly where counterfeit and hijacked listings slip through, because identity checks confirm a seller is a real business, not that their inventory is genuine or that they're approved to sell a given brand. 

Amazon does verify the identity of new third-party sellers. Government ID, business registration, banking and tax info, and in many cases a live video call. That part of the process has gotten stricter over the past couple of years. 

But identity verification only answers one question: is this a real person or business? It doesn't answer the question that actually matters to a buyer, which is whether that seller is authorized to sell this specific branded product, and whether what they're shipping is genuine. 

That second question is mostly left to the brand owner to police, through a program called Brand Registry. A trademark holder can request removal of an unauthorized listing, but only after they find it. Amazon doesn't verify brand authorization before a listing goes live, and it doesn't continuously audit a seller's inventory once they're approved. Enforcement is reactive. Someone has to catch the fake listing and report it before it comes down, and in the meantime it's live, in the Buy Box, and shipping. The UL e-bike case is a good example of what that actually takes: two of the largest, best-resourced organizations in the space filing a federal lawsuit to shut down one seller with seven listings. 

For a buyer, that means the job of catching a fake falls on them. Check the seller name, read recent reviews for red flags, check "Sold by" and "Fulfilled by," maybe order a sample before committing to volume. That's a reasonable amount of diligence for a consumer buying one item. It's not something a business can scale across recurring, high-volume categories like print consumables, safety equipment, electronics, or MRO parts. 

CoreTrust helps remove that burden by connecting members to contracted suppliers with clearer accountability, product traceability, and established relationships with leading manufacturers. That gives procurement teams greater confidence that they are purchasing authentic OEM products rather than relying on individual marketplace listings to verify authenticity. 

Why Do Marketplace Procurement Risks Become a Liability Issue, Not Just a Quality Issue? 

Marketplace procurement risk becomes a liability issue because a counterfeit or hijacked purchase doesn't just cost money twice — it can void warranties, trigger denied insurance claims, create compliance gaps, and pass liability through to a company's own customers, often without any warning sign before something fails. 

A counterfeit or hijacked purchase isn't just a bad SKU. The exposure runs in two directions at once, cost and liability, and both can sit there unnoticed until something breaks. 

On the cost side. A buyer pays once for the counterfeit, then pays again for the real product once someone catches the problem, plus the labor to sort it out. If the fake part damages the equipment it's used in, or worse, damages a facility, a cheap purchase turns into a capital loss. Most OEM warranties are contingent on genuine parts, so a counterfeit component can quietly void coverage without the buyer ever knowing until it fails. And if the marketplace seller who shipped it has since vanished, or was never the real seller to begin with, there's often no one left to hold accountable. Compare that to a contracted supplier, where there's a name, a contract, and a defined remedy if something goes wrong. 

On the liability side, and this is the part most buyers never think about because it doesn't show up on an invoice. These risks are worth flagging to legal and risk teams rather than treating this as legal advice, but the categories are real, and the battery and charger cases above show they're not hypothetical. 

Counterfeit components, whether it's a cartridge, a battery, an electrical part, or PPE, are made outside the manufacturer's quality and safety controls. If one causes a fire, an injury, or property damage, "we bought it on Amazon and didn't know it was fake" is not a strong position to be in. The buyer chose the channel, and that choice gets scrutinized after the fact. The CPSC's chargers warning and the lithium-ion battery lawsuits above are exactly the kind of incident that turns into that conversation. 

Insurance carriers can and do deny claims tied to non-OEM or counterfeit parts, especially when the equipment documentation specifies genuine consumables. That's usually discovered in the middle of a claim, which is the worst possible time to find out. 

Depending on the industry, sourcing requirements around genuine parts are often baked into contracts or accreditation standards, particularly in healthcare, aviation, and government work. A company can end up technically out of compliance without ever intending to be. 

And if a counterfeit part ends up inside a product or service a company delivers to its own customer, the liability doesn't stop there. It passes right through. 

None of this requires assuming bad intent on anyone's part. It's just what happens when a purchase is made without any real visibility into who manufactured and shipped the product, and the unsettling part is a company can be carrying that exposure for months without a single sign anything is wrong. 

What Is the Alternative to Open-Marketplace Procurement? 

The practical alternative to open-marketplace procurement is sourcing through a group purchasing organization (GPO) agreement, which replaces an unverified chain of custody with a named, contracted supplier and a documented path back to the manufacturer — at least for categories where authenticity actually matters. That's not just print supplies. It's safety equipment, electronics, batteries, MRO parts, and any other recurring commodity where a fake product carries real downside. 

The difference isn't Amazon bad, distributor good. It's about what each channel is actually built to guarantee. 

On the open marketplace, Amazon verifies who the seller is, but not whether they're authorized to sell a given brand. The chain of custody back to the manufacturer is often unclear or impossible to trace. If a shipment goes wrong, the buyer has to discover it and dispute it after the fact, and pricing can shift seller to seller on the exact same listing. The risk of a hijacked or substituted product is baked into the model. 

Under a GPO-vetted agreement, the supplier is named and contracted. There's a documented, auditable path back to the manufacturer. If something goes wrong, there's contractual accountability and a defined remedy, and pricing is pre-negotiated instead of shifting under the buyer. Product substitution isn't a risk to manage, it's a risk the contract eliminates. 

A GPO relationship puts a name and a contract behind every shipment, and with CoreTrust, that means significantly more than a verified supplier. Members gain access to key suppliers across critical enterprise categories, providing a more accountable and traceable path to authentic OEM products. CoreTrust’s pre-negotiated contracts pair that confidence with enterprise-level pricing, stronger terms and defined protections against price volatility, supplier substitution and delivery disruption. 

Members also gain greater spend visibility through CoreTrust’s analytics platform and access to subject-matter expertise, reducing the burden on procurement teams while supporting supplier vetting, contract negotiation, compliance and ongoing performance management. 

Companies that route recurring, high-volume categories through CoreTrust's pre-vetted agreements aren't always chasing the lowest sticker price on a single order. What they're building is a procurement foundation with accountability at every level: a named supplier, an auditable chain of custody, contractual continuity protections, and a trusted partner actively monitoring the market on their behalf. For high-frequency categories — especially those where a counterfeit product can catch fire, void a warranty, or trigger a compliance gap — that foundation doesn't just reduce risk. It transforms indirect spend from a liability exposure into a source of measurable, defensible enterprise value.