Latest / The Resilient Retail Game Plan - retail insights, retail trends and best practices / Ghost stores, fake shops and what they mean for real independent retailers

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Ghost stores, fake shops and what they mean for real independent retailers · The Resilient Retail Game Plan - retail insights, retail trends and best practices

• 0:00
  It's with a heavy heart that we share this message with you.
• 0:02
  After years of love and care poured into this little shop,
• 0:05
  it's time for us to close.
• 0:07
  A heartfelt message from a couple who are closing their boutique doors
• 0:10
  with one final sale, ready to focus on their new role as grandparents.
• 0:15
  At first glance, everything looks genuine — the emotional farewell,
• 0:18
  the photo of the owners — but on second glance, things don't add up.
• 0:22
  Despite the title referencing a local town, the shipping details
• 0:26
  note that orders are dispatched from their warehouse in Central Asia.
• 0:29
  A closer look at the photo suggests the smoothness and uniformity
• 0:32
  of an AI-generated image.
• 0:34
  As I dug further, I realised I hadn't just stumbled across one fake retailer.
• 0:39
  I'd stumbled across a whole new business model.
• 0:43
  But this is what really interested me.
• 0:44
  What happens to all the genuine independent retailers when customers
• 0:48
  stop trusting what they see online?
• 1:04
  Ghost stores are no longer unusual.
• 1:07
  What I am describing at the beginning of this episode is what consumer protection
• 1:11
  organisations refer to as a ghost store.
• 1:14
  It is an e-commerce website that is set up usually specifically to look
• 1:18
  like a local independent retailer.
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  It will have the name of the town in the URL.
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  It will feature photographs or AI- generated photographs of owners
• 1:28
  that do not exist, that are supposedly all from one location or another.
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  They are set up.
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  They start trading.
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  They usually run huge discounts disguised as closing down sales, and then they
• 1:41
  disappear, leaving nothing behind other than disgruntled reviews on platforms
• 1:47
  like Trustpilot, where you can see clearly that customers have had a terrible
• 1:50
  experience with low-quality products that took a really long time to arrive.
• 1:54
  And that they were unable to return without paying high fees.
• 1:59
  And basically, once those reviews have piled up enough that people
• 2:02
  stop purchasing from this website, they just shut it down, and
• 2:06
  then they start up another one.
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  And so they are effective when they prey on people who are not paying quite
• 2:13
  close enough attention or maybe have just come across this website before the
• 2:17
  terrible reviews have started racking up.
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  And AI has accelerated them because it's now so quick and
• 2:25
  easy to get these websites set up.
• 2:28
  To help me understand more about this phenomenon, I spoke to Chris Emmins,
• 2:32
  founder and CEO of KwikChex, a consumer protection organisation.
• 2:37
  I don't think “prevalent” gets near it.
• 2:39
  Not even “pervasive” gets near it, to be honest.
• 2:42
  It's a part of the world we live in now, if you like.
• 2:45
  I mean, it is absolutely everywhere.
• 2:48
  Yeah.
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  We're expert in this, and we can't even figure
• 2:52
  out quite what the numbers are.
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  It's extraordinary.
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  And it doesn't really matter where we look, you know, because we're
• 2:57
  detecting things all the time.
• 2:59
  Mm.
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  So if we look at online reviews, if we look at a company registration
• 3:04
  resource like Companies House, or obviously social media, it's always there.
• 3:09
  We can find them within seconds, frankly.
• 3:12
  So it becomes a question of, well, two things really.
• 3:16
  I mean, just how much is out there.
• 3:17
  We know pretty much what that is.
• 3:20
  It's thousands and thousands of businesses that are fraudulent or certainly
• 3:24
  dishonest in some form or another.
• 3:26
  In the world we live in, it's just so darn easy and cheap
• 3:30
  Mm.
• 3:30
  to do these things.
• 3:31
  Yeah.
• 3:32
  They now have AI on their side, of course.
• 3:35
  Yeah.
• 3:36
  Which means that a website can go up, you know, pretty much within an hour.
• 3:40
  They could have drawn down all the images from other sites.
• 3:42
  I mean, we see that all the time.
• 3:44
  Yeah.
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  Obviously, you can do a reverse image search, as I'm
• 3:47
  sure you've looked at.
• 3:48
  And it will identify it came from another site, et cetera, et cetera.
• 3:51
  But nevertheless, people do get drawn into that.
• 3:54
  And the perpetrators aren't all silly enough to
• 3:59
  have the price at such a low level that it's a red flag.
• 4:04
  The better ones could use a sale, for example, and say,
• 4:08
  Yeah.
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  “Sale now,” and it's still only 15 or 20% cheaper, so it
• 4:13
  doesn't really alert people.
• 4:16
  So much more is needed, in fact, to cope with this.
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  There is another element as well, which KwikChex has always been
• 4:23
  interested in and assisted with, and that is one of the unfortunate
• 4:28
  side effects of this sort of conduct, and the fact it's so pervasive, is
• 4:33
  that it creates hurdles and hindrances for many legitimate businesses
• 4:38
  in the independent sector
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  Yeah.
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  particularly.
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  Because I see a lot of advice saying “a company
• 4:46
  you've never heard of” is often contained within the advice.
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  So what is the impact on the consumer now that they're really learning
• 4:54
  that they can't believe their eyes?
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  So research by the user-generated content platform
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  Bazaarvoice has shown that 97% of consumers no longer rely on one source
• 5:08
  anymore when they're purchasing.
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  That means that 97% of people will not just go straight to
• 5:13
  a website and make a purchase.
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  They are cross-referencing everything.
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  They're looking at the website.
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  They're looking on Instagram to see what social media presence a company has.
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  They're looking at reviews.
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  They're checking TikTok.
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  They're going on Reddit and searching what people's experiences are like,
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  and maybe they're googling for information about this company as well.
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  This isn't paranoia.
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  This is adaptation.
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  I spoke to Doug Straton, the chief marketing officer of
• 5:40
  Bazaarvoice, who explains more.
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  I think the big difference now in terms of multi-source
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  is, the digital environment has enabled shopping to
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  take place pretty much anywhere.
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  And so there's an element of what we used to call merchandising that
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  happens in social environments, broader media environments, not
• 5:59
  just on a product description page within the retail environment.
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  And people don't engage or spend as much time in any one place for very long.
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  They're not captured, in other words.
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  And so their ability to kind of see the same message and the same merchandising
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  where it used to be just message and then drive them down the funnel, now the
• 6:17
  message and the merchandising is happening upper funnel, mid-funnel, and
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  finally, you know, true lower funnel.
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  And I think that's the big difference.
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  It's both the way they're receiving the messages, the way we're merchandising
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  now in the physical and digital environments, and ultimately, the more
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  times you can hit people with, like, this is the message and then here
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  are the proof points that bolster the proposition of any given brand, product,
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  or service, that just drives the behaviour further, essentially.
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  So imagine someone has never heard of your business.
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  It was interesting that Chris Emmins mentioned that one of the pieces of
• 6:53
  advice that is given to consumers to try and combat these ghost stores
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  is they ask consumers to think about and consider if they have
• 7:02
  even heard of this company before.
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  Now, this is really difficult if you're a small business because
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  the vast majority of people in this world have not heard of you before.
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  So imagine that you've got a consumer who's coming to you who has been warned
• 7:16
  to be wary of businesses that they've not heard of before, and they come across
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  your ad or they come across a mention of you and they want to know, are you real?
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  Are you a real person?
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  Which seems like a ridiculous question that you have to answer in 2026, but this
• 7:31
  is the mindset that the consumer is in.
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  So what would they find if they went to your website or on your social media?
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  Would they see you as the founder?
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  Would they see reviews that they could read?
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  Do you have an active social media presence of some sort?
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  Do you have a Google My Business profile that they can reference?
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  Is there any press about you, about the business?
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  Are there any behind-the-scenes pictures?
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  Are there testimonials or pictures of your community or your customers?
• 8:00
  Or is it just a Shopify website?
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  Trust isn't built on one page anymore.
• 8:06
  It's built through consistency.
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  In addition, if you have got a physical store, make sure there are
• 8:11
  pictures of that on your website because that is a big differentiator.
• 8:15
  I wanted to talk to a bigger retailer to understand what the impact has been
• 8:20
  on them and the way that they market their business when they are faced with
• 8:25
  a customer that has a real lack of trust.
• 8:29
  I wanted to reach out to Passenger Clothing.
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  Passenger Clothing is an outdoor clothing brand.
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  They are fast growth.
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  They are mostly e-commerce, and they have popped up in the Times 100 fastest growing
• 8:42
  UK companies for three years in a row.
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  I sent them over some questions via email, and I got this response
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  from their CEO, Jon Lane.
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  And what he talked about, I think, is really important lesson
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  for us all to keep in mind.
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  He said that, "Transparency is really important to us and to our customers."
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  He says, "We currently have over 50,000 independent reviews on Trustpilot.
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  We also have over 65,000 reviews on our website to help customers make
• 9:09
  informed purchasing decisions." And so I think this is a really good reminder
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  that social proof is really important.
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  And these big retailers, they are obviously collecting so
• 9:19
  many more testimonials and reviews than a smaller retailer.
• 9:23
  But it's interesting to see how they're really focusing on this because it
• 9:26
  helps them answer that question.
• 9:27
  If somebody comes across an ad for Passenger Clothing, they're able to go
• 9:32
  and cross-reference that with a really deep bank of reviews to understand
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  that this is a genuine business.
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  But then I thought what was interesting was really how they approach their social
• 9:41
  media and their community building.
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  He says, "We live for offline community moments, meeting our customers where they
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  play. Our strong social content strategy ensures we capture behind-the-scenes
• 9:51
  moments. Our founder, Rich, features quite heavily to give our customers a
• 9:55
  sense of the people behind the brand."
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  So Passenger aren't trying to prove as much that they're human.
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  They're simply documenting the fact that they are, which feels quite different.
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  They're almost deliberately creating these offline moments that they can then
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  capture and share online to prove that they are real, to show the behind the
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  scenes, to show the people behind the brand, and basically to put in a heck of
• 10:19
  a lot more effort and energy than any of these spoof ghost websites are putting in.
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  So there's this whole bank of images as well as all those reviews.
• 10:27
  There's all of this proof and documentation that they are in fact human
• 10:31
  beings behind this business. Something else to keep in mind that was an interesting
• 10:37
  side note to this whole investigation.
• 10:39
  Most retailers think trust signals exist for customers, and clearly, as we've
• 10:43
  seen from the Bazaarvoice research, that it is really, really important that
• 10:47
  the customers are able to see and prove that to themselves that you are human.
• 10:52
  But increasingly, these trust signals are also for AI.
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  This was the point in my interview with Doug Straton when I stopped thinking
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  specifically about these ghost stores and started thinking about what trust means
• 11:04
  in the future for independent retailers.
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  Once the product is out there in the environment, people trust other people, or
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  what they perceive to be other people.
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  And so what we find, which is interesting now in the age of
• 11:16
  AI, is that AI, of course, is now referencing human-sourced data, and
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  if you look at some of the job titles inside of some of the AI platforms,
• 11:24
  they specifically call it out — vice president of human-sourced data.
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  They want the AIs to, of course, reflect the truth, because if
• 11:32
  they don't, and people think they're all hallucinations and
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  nonsense, then they will lose the credibility and therefore their user base.
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  So you've got two things.
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  You've got people trust other people, and now you have AI
• 11:43
  that trusts other people.
• 11:45
  And that combination has been very fortunate, obviously,
• 11:48
  for us because that's literally the core of our business.
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  So we're now becoming a place, or a service, that allows
• 11:57
  shoppers and consumers to engage with products, but through the
• 12:00
  voice of consumers and shoppers that have used or bought those products.
• 12:03
  And AI and AI agents are also picking up that same information more and
• 12:07
  more and more and using that to actually surface the products and
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  then ultimately to recommend the products, which creates a really
• 12:14
  interesting dynamic. It's better to be lucky than to be great, you know?
• 12:17
  We have a really good product, and we have had.
• 12:20
  But now it's a new era, and we're lucky enough to be one of
• 12:23
  those types of companies that is in a good position because trust is in
• 12:27
  demand, and authenticity is in demand.
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  AI models, agentic AI, are increasingly looking at citations, backlinks,
• 12:35
  reviews, structured information and human- generated content to assess
• 12:39
  whether or not your business is reliable.
• 12:42
  So citations, backlinks, whatever they can
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  essentially hoover up, or whatever's being fed to them directly, because
• 12:48
  we're starting to do that too.
• 12:50
  Because that gives a robust data set to work with.
• 12:52
  Yeah.
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  This is incredibly relevant for small businesses.
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  You need to think about not just how to get the customers to trust you, but how
• 13:00
  that trust is also going to filter into this new wave of agentic AI models that
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  may be searching and shopping directly from you on the customer's behalf.
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  They want to make sure that they're surfacing really
• 13:10
  good quality results as well.
• 13:13
  If you're listening to this podcast, you may think to yourself, "Well, this feels
• 13:16
  quite overwhelming. I posted a reel about this on Instagram, and somebody said, "You
• 13:19
  know, on top of everything else I've got to do, I've now got to prove I'm human.
• 13:22
  How is that fair?" And it can feel unfair, and it can feel like an additional burden.
• 13:26
  But I think the fundamental question to ask yourself is just
• 13:32
  start by saying, “What do people see when they search for me?
• 13:35
  Can they see who I am, where I'm based?
• 13:38
  Can they see genuine customer reviews?
• 13:40
  Can they see behind the scenes, real video, consistent
• 13:43
  branding, active social media?"
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  Doesn't mean you have to be posting every day, but is it
• 13:47
  at least updated once a week?
• 13:49
  Can they see mentions elsewhere online about me and my business?
• 13:53
  Because here's the reality.
• 13:55
  Five years ago, we optimised our websites for Google.
• 13:58
  Today, we optimise them for sceptical customers, and tomorrow we'll be
• 14:01
  optimising them for AI agents.
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  So this is the key thing here.
• 14:06
  Trust is in demand, and authenticity is in demand.
• 14:10
  The good news for independent retailers is that authenticity is
• 14:13
  one thing that you already have.
• 14:15
  The challenge now is making sure that people and increasingly
• 14:18
  AI can actually see it.
• 14:21
  Thank you so much for listening.
• 14:22
  I hope you enjoyed today's episode.
• 14:24
  Why not head over to Instagram at Resilient Retail Club and let me know
• 14:27
  what you thought about the episode?
• 14:29
  And of course, if you like, follow or subscribe, you'll be the first
• 14:31
  to know about each new episode when it's released on a Thursday morning.
• 14:34
  See you next week.