As part of its commitment to delivering quality, genuine products to its customers, Hewlett Packard (HP) has strengthened its relationship with local dealers to stamp counterfeit products out of the market. HP is at the forefront of combating counterfeit products, and the company has embarked on conferences and awareness campaigns with dealers, rendering incentives and fostering relations that could help eradicate substandard products.
Expressing his support for the move, the Chief Executive Officer of Amason Computers, a Lagos based dealer in HP products, Mr. Ethelbert Amaefule, said the measures taken by HP will go a long way in curbing the counterfeiting and grey market syndrome in the market. Mr Amaefule also said it will shore-up confidence in the company’s products in Nigeria, noting that the twin issues of counterfeiting and grey market have before now affected the business operations of authorized HP dealers in the country.
According to him, “HP partners have over the years been losing a lot of market share to counterfeit products that are being sold by some Information Technology dealers in various locations across the country.” This situation has made HP to routinely invest in Research and Development to ensure that counterfeit products are eradicated from the market, a move which has seen them come up with the hologram. The hologram is a product security feature which easily helps to identify original HP products. There is also the numbering identification method which can also be used to differentiate genuine products from counterfeits.
To a large extent, other initiatives to curb the counterfeit menace, such as mobile authentication, have significantly reduced the volume of substandard HP products in the Nigerian market. This has raised the market scope of dealers and the distribution performance of its major distributors thus creating a channel flow of genuine products to the various vendors across the country.
Mr. Amaefule however suggested that HP’s awareness campaign should be more concerted to achieve its purpose. He said, “I would want HP to be more practical by building a robust task force that will work with other security operatives to descend on those imitating their products and selling them to customers.”
“If the awareness has practical effect in form of clamping down on the fake HP product dealers, it would help tackle the issue. I am saying this because doing this, as a concerted effort, would help in sanitizing the market because products that will be in the market will be original products and for customers too, they will derive maximum value for what they are buying,” Mr Amaefule added.
The Amason computer boss however pledged the commitment of his company to work with HP and other relevant stakeholders towards ensuring that perpetrators of counterfeiting and grey market are prosecuted in the country.
