Journalists all over the world rely on Marketplace Pulse insights and data for their stories. Marketplace Pulse works with leading magazines, newspapers, and online publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, and CNBC.
Journalists all over the globe rely on our insights and data for their stories. Here are some of the most recent articles Marketplace Pulse was featured in.
“Many products on Amazon Sweden came from auto-translated listings on other Amazon marketplaces, which enabled it to have a deep catalog on day one, but has unfortunately resulted in many wrong, sometimes comical, and even offensive Swedish translations,” wrote Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of e-commerece intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse.
The platform is currently adding between 45,000 to 50,000 new sellers a week, and already has outstripped the total number of sellers added last year, according to data from Marketplace Pulse, a research firm. Half of those new sellers are based in the U.S., a significant jump over the past two years, said Marketplace Pulse founder Juozas Kaziukenas.
But some question the value of a marketplace strategy for grocers. They point out that while Amazon and Walmart have had success with their marketplaces, that doesn't mean competitors should follow suit. There's also little evidence that marketplaces add value for retailers, said Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of Marketplace Pulse, a firm that collects data on retail marketplaces,
"[Kroger’s] biggest differentiation from anyone else, especially Amazon, is the store. Trying to be like Amazon is probably chasing their own tail," he noted.
Juozas Kaziukenas, founder and CEO of Marketplace Pulse, said while Amazon has been building out its own private-label brands, especially apparel, they don’t get as big a push on Prime Day as its higher margin devices and electronics.
“I was watching the livestream, and it’s not about their brands,” Kaziukenas said. “The first page of the Prime Day site, they’re never upfront with exclusives. I’m sure they had increasing sales but it’s not a huge focus. Out of the thousands of deals listed, I only saw 20 to 40 for their own brands – that’s very small.”
Even though ecommerce via smart devices like the Echo is miniscule, Kaziukenas said Amazon continues to practically give them away on Prime Day to sink its hooks into the home ever deeper, preparing for the inevitable day when voice ordering becomes as common as mobile commerce. In Congressional hearings this past July, Amazon was accused of deliberately selling its Echo devices below cost to undercut competitors and monopolize the space, a charge CEO Jeff Bezos denied. More recently, a House subcommittee last week accused Amazon of wielding its market dominance like a weapon to thwart competition.
“… Large companies are not dominant by definition, and the presumption that success can only be the result of anti-competitive behavior is simply wrong,” Amazon responded in a blog post, even asserting that “fringe notions on antitrust would destroy small businesses and hurt consumers” in its headline.
“There’s not much (voice) buying now, but the idea is they’ll be more useful in the future, and by then there will be a device in every home,” Kaziukenas said. “I’ve seen stats that 1% of users bought something with a smart home speaker, and no one bought more than one time sing voice devices. But it’s something that could become powerful.”
But, as Juozas Kaziukėnas, CEO of research firm Marketplace Pulse noted, “even if you go to the social platforms of all of these retailers,” he said, “they’re not really heavily pushing it.” He went on: “it’s maybe one of the laziest years.”
Even Amazon, Kaziukėnas said, didn’t put a huge emphasis on its multimedia marketing efforts. In past years, Amazon put its live video front and center during Prime Day, but this year, not so much. “It is clearly a rushed event for a lot of these players,” he said.
Sellers also store goods in their own warehouses and manage fulfillment, but the majority of Amazon’s top third-party merchants in the U.S. use FBA for their orders.
Months later, Amazon is still working to recover from its inventory interruptions. Once it began allowing nonessentials, there was a backlog of inbound shipments, said Juozas Kaziukenas, who runs the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse.
“I think Amazon’s fulfillment is its greatest asset and strength - it is the most sophisticated and efficient e-commerce fulfillment operation at least in the US - but at the same time, perhaps inherently, it is also Amazon’s single point of failure,” Kaziukenas said. “Any disruption to its fulfillment operations affects Amazon and its marketplace.”
“There’s no one sitting down reading through every product and comparing them one-to-one,” says Juozas Kaziukėnas, the head of research firm Marketplace Pulse.
Walmart’s marketplace has about 55,000 sellers while Amazon has about 2 million worldwide, according to e-commerce analysis firm Marketplace Pulse.
A growing number of AmazonBasics products, which the company promotes heavily on its site, have become bestsellers since the line's inception, and many have ratings above four stars, according to Marketplace Pulse research.