The global online marketplace landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by technological innovations, shifting consumer behaviours and fierce competition. Established giants must increasingly contend with fast-growing upstarts, creating new opportunities for brands and sellers. This briefing explores this dynamic while profiling key marketplace platforms, such as AliExpress, Allegro, Amazon, Douyin, eBay, Flipkart, JD, MercadoLibre, Naver, Noon, Shein, Shopee, Temu, TikTok Shop, Tmall and Tokopedia.
This report comes in PPT.
Online marketplaces lead the rankings in global retail e-commerce value sales due to their volume-driven nature and expansive product ranges. Six of the top 10 online retailers globally operate predominantly as marketplaces. Most of the top marketplaces are based in the US or China, allowing them to capitalise on large and connected domestic consumer bases.
Amidst global inflation and cost-of-living concerns, consumers are more cost conscious and looking for ways to stretch every dollar. This has fuelled the popularity of discount-orientated online marketplaces such as Temu and Shein, which focus on ultra low-price products. These platforms extensively leverage advertising and social media to generate publicity and drive sales.
Social commerce and livestreaming blends content and algorithm-driven discovery with e-commerce in a closed-loop ecosystem. Rapid developments in AI and GenAI are transforming customer engagement and service on marketplaces, with notable implementations that include GenAI-powered virtual avatars used in livestreaming e-commerce.
Order fulfilment, the last and only physical user-facing touchpoint in e-commerce, is critical in shaping consumers’ marketplace satisfaction. Marketplaces are investing in logistics infrastructure and innovating in fulfilment models to speed up delivery times, improve customer experiences and drive cost efficiencies, helping to provide a competitive advantage.
Marketplaces are diversifying and building new capabilities in adjacent areas for a competitive advantage and operational resilience. These capabilities typically leverage existing resources and complement the core retail e-commerce business. Common adjacent business segments for marketplaces include financial services, retail media, logistics and loyalty programmes.
Retail is the sale of new and used goods to consumers from a business for personal or household consumption from retail outlets, kiosks, market stalls, vending, direct selling and e-commerce. Retail is the aggregation of Retail Offline and Retail E-Commerce. Excludes specialist retailers of motor vehicles, motorcycles, vehicle parts. Also excludes fuel sales, foodservice sales, rental transactions, and wholesale sales (e.g. Cash and Carry). Sales value excluding or including VAT/Sales Tax. Retail also excludes the informal retail sector. Informal retailing is retail trade which is not declared to the tax authorities. Informal retailing encompasses (a) sales generated by unregistered and unlicensed retailers, i.e. retailers operating illegally, and (b) any proportion of sales generated by a registered and licensed retailer that is not declared to the tax authorities. Unregistered and unlicensed retailers operate predominantly (although not exclusively) as street hawkers or operate open market stalls, as these channels are harder for the authorities to monitor than permanent outlets. Activities in the illegal market, which is usually understood to refer to trade in illegal, counterfeit or stolen merchandise, are included within our definition of informal retailing. Activities in the “grey market”, which is usually understood to refer to trade in legal merchandise that is sold through unauthorized channels – for example cigarettes bought legally in another country, legally imported, but sold at lower prices than in authorized channels – will be included as informal retailing if no tax is paid on sale by the retailer. However if the retailer pays tax – for example on cigarettes bought legally in another country but sold at a lower price than standard – the sale is included within formal retail.
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