Research

According to Marketplace Pulse research, Amazon-owned private label brands are not nearly as successful as many paint them to be. Amazon has been successful in creating generic items at low prices, but only when using the Amazon brand name (i.e., AmazonBasics and Amazon Essentials). Otherwise, the hundreds of brands and tens of thousands of products launched are not resonating with customers.

The Year in Review looks at the state of marketplaces and their challenges, and makes predictions on what’s to come next year. It’s a deep-dive report built on our research, highlighting more than twenty different metrics and the context surrounding them.

Amazon marketplace metrics. Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world. They run a marketplace on all of their websites allowing third-party sellers to sell products, totaling to 50% of total sales.

eBay is an e-commerce company running customer-to-customer and business-to-customer marketplaces. Over time eBay has transitioned towards fixed-price listings, meaning products which are sold just like on Amazon without an auction. This type of buying is now the majority of sales on eBay.

In 2009, Walmart launched Walmart Marketplace. Products from retailers are displayed alongside Walmart’s own inventory and are called out as Walmart Marketplace items, with the seller’s name displayed on the items. While initially requiring an invite, in 2016 they made it easier to join the marketplace in hopes to accelerate its growth.

Etsy is a marketplace launched in 2005 focused on handmade and vintage items and supplies, as well as unique factory-manufactured items. Etsy went public on April 16, 2015. Uniquely Etsy has sellers and buyers from most countries in the world. Key markets is the US and UK, Canada, Australia, France, and Germany.

Statistics and metrics compiled from press releases, financial earnings reports and Marketplace Pulse data