Question

What is the Grey Market? Where and in what types of products do we find most grey market products these days and why?

minimum 300 words

Answer 1

Grey market is basically a legal market in which goods are being manufactured under the proper guidance and knowledge of the owner of the brand but those manufactured goods will be sold out through distribution channel without intending the original manufacturer. Grey market is purely legal, it is not as like black market. Sales of all legal commodities and goods are being done in grey market.

For example - grey market in security market will include issuing stocks and bonds to some of the preferred customers before they get issue in an initial public offerings.

In grey market products are being sold outside the authorized distribution channel of the original manufacturer of the products.  

Some distributers are being blocked by the original manufacturer of any product, but those blocked distributers want to sell products of that manufacturer so in this case the distributor buy those products from grey market and sell out further.

In grey market, proper guarantee is not being provided on the products.

Grey market goods are not being trustable as it is not guaranteed that the product is fresh one or used one.

Customers can not differentiate between the products from grey market and from original market.

Grey market highly effect the company and its brand image.

Any type of product will be there in grey market, like girl's clothings, make up kits, men clothings, female clothings, shoes, cosmetics etc. Nikon products are also considered as grey market products,

Some faked or copied softwares are also the products of grey market. Grey market of iPhone in China is also an example of the same. Any type of product will be in grey market. There is no limitations or boundaries for products to be in the grey market.

Theses types of market are sometimes used in order to increase the sales of the products, some manufacturer have multiple distribution channel for single product for have bulk sales so in that case these products goes into grey market. Some distributor uses grey market in order to achieve their sales target fastly.