The role of marketplace in the success of online business

The multi-vendor or online marketplace is not an old business model, it has appeared about several recent years. However, from that first appearance, some giants such as Amazon, Sears, and Walmart has recognized the potential of this new business model, they quickly changed their strategies by adding marketplace to their operations and now, you can see how they succeed with this model. Regardless of being a big or small brand or retailer, the opportunities for you to earn profits from this marketplace model are actually high. Therefore, if the amount of business moving online will continue to increase with this high speed, it will make sense to push your presence in the marketplace arena.

One question: what is an exact marketplace? Essentially, it is a version of having an online storefront. Let's take an example of Amazon for easy to understand. Amazon will be the first-party business, they have a marketplace and allow third-party sellers to take part in and sell their products. Sometimes, order fulfillment will be done by the marketplace operator, it will be so flexible, depending on who it is.

You have the brief definition of multi-vendor (marketplace), here are several reasons why you should choose this model for your business:

• Commerce appears new version: E-commerce. Evident? Marcy and Sears decide to close almost physical locations and invest more in a comprehensive Omni-channel strategy, you can call it a tell-tale sign of the changes times.
• It enriches the channel of your mix. Supposing that you have your own e-commerce site, you can expand your influence on the market and approach more customer segmentation, let's be a member of an online marketplace seller. According to the data collected by www.compete.com, the number of unique visitors on Amazon.com just in 2014 was 124,632,113. So how an individual seller can boost their website to reach this number?
• If you do not have many products to sell but you are the owner of that marketplace, that's so good. You can earn a lot of benefit besides from your products and services. The marketplace will make sure consumers don’t leave your site by adding third-party sellers and increasing assortment by default. You try, third-party sellers try, everyone wins.
• What I mention above are all benefits for small business, if you are a big brand, you still can take advantage of this model. Let's see Japanese e-commerce website Rakuten.com, besides Channel, there are also several high-end brands choosing to sell their products on this site.
• Another reason is in the competition that benefits both customers and sellers. I mean in the fiercely competitive environment, the weaker products will be rejected from a marketplace, the remaining products will be the high-quality products on the market, customers will trust and buy more so profit for sellers increases as well.
• One advantage for consumers in the marketplace is that a variety of sellers means a wide range of products available for customers to choose. The assortment of these websites is very rich. Remember that when customers land site, don't let them leave.

 

Further reading

• Statista marketplace research
• BigCommerce marketplace guide