Almost three quarters of brands have seen their online sales negatively affected as a result of counterfeit goods, a new survey has found.

The study, from e-commerce firm MarkMonitor, found that 42 per cent of 150 respondents from global brands had lost up to 10 per cent of their sales, while more than one in five believed the impact to be somewhere between 11 and 50 per cent.

The figure of affected brands has dropped from last year, when 86 per cent of respondents had been impacted in some way by counterfeit goods, with 39 per cent stating that 11-50 per cent of sales had been lost to fake goods.

The survey also found that 65 per cent of all respondents believed damage to brand reputation to be the most significant factor of online counterfeit abuse. Interestingly, the issue of losing sales to counterfeited or pirated goods was only expressed as the most important aspect by a quarter of those surveyed.

Chrissie Jamieson, senior director marketing communications at MarkMonitor, said: “While this year’s figures are an improvement on what we found from the 2016 Symposium, it is clear that brands still have their work cut out when it comes to protecting themselves and their customers against the financial implications caused by counterfeit goods.

“There are numerous methods that exist for effectively mitigating the counterfeiting threat — it’s simply a case now of helping brands actually put those measures in place.”

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