Product listing hijacking on Amazon allows counterfeiters to attach to legitimate sellers' listings and steal Buy Box sales

On Amazon's catalog-based marketplace, any seller can list against an existing product ASIN, and hijackers exploit this by attaching to high-performing listings, undercutting the original seller's price with counterfeit or inferior goods, winning the Buy Box, and capturing the sales that the legitimate seller's marketing and review-building efforts generated. So what? The original seller loses sales immediately because 82% of Amazon purchases go through the Buy Box, and the hijacker's lower price wins it algorithmically. So what? When hijacker-sold counterfeits generate negative reviews, those reviews appear on the legitimate seller's listing, permanently damaging the product's rating and conversion rate. So what? The legitimate seller must spend time and money filing IP complaints, hiring Amazon-specialized lawyers, and enrolling in Brand Registry, all of which are reactive measures that take weeks to resolve while sales bleed. So what? Serial hijackers create new seller accounts faster than Amazon can remove them, making enforcement a game of whack-a-mole. So what? The hijacking threat forces brands to adopt expensive defensive strategies like transparency codes, legal monitoring services, and MAP enforcement programs, raising the cost of selling on Amazon and pricing out small brands. The structural root cause is Amazon's shared-catalog architecture where multiple sellers list against one product detail page, combined with automated Buy Box algorithms that prioritize price over seller legitimacy, and an enforcement process that requires the victim to prove infringement rather than requiring new sellers to prove authenticity.