Online marketplaces have literally changed the definition of running online retail businesses. Those days are gone when running online businesses required huge investments, but with the advancement of online marketplaces, things are changing drastically.
Nowadays, if you want to sell online, building e-commerce site or investing heavily are not important.
Based on a 2017 report, more than 300,000 third party sellers are choosing Amazon for the process. On other hand, 31% first time shoppers prefer buying from the online marketplaces.
Online service marketplaces have created a win-win situation for everyone. As the operators of those sites are commissioned heavily from the vendors or they can also charge subscription selling fee.
Even customers are also able to compare and buy products at an affordable price while sellers are able to sell products without setting up a site or spending managing expenditure.
Not only multivendor marketplaces, such as Amazon, eBay and Alibaba, but also Mudah (Malaysia based marketplace), Rakutan (Japan based marketplace), Carousel (Singapore based marketplace) are growing amazingly despite of being the local region based marketplaces.
Because of the growth, many entrepreneurs are inspired to launch their own marketplaces. It may seem easy but the process can be hectic.
Challenges one can face while launching online marketplaces:
- Searching out the right e-commerce platform which is also scalable in supporting your business growth is one of the biggest challenges.
- Finding and collecting vendors for your site can also another major issue to be dealt with.
- Handling the marketplace to ensure the consumers buy from your website, is effective instead of competing stereotypically.
- Quality control is another important aspect to be taken care of to ensure zero fraudulent sales on your site or with the customers.
Type of marketplace to be built
Few types of marketplaces are there which can be launched. Here are some.
Consulting marketplaces:
This type of marketplace can let you help people connecting with professionals like doctors, lawyers, and consultants for any type of advice or services.
Service marketplaces:
This type of marketplace allows people to directly avail services like online tour packages, Marketing packages, website designing service and subscription services from providers. For instance, Urbanclap and Airtasker are the best examples.
Products delivery marketplaces:
This type of marketplaces connect people with sellers to compare and buy products based on their preferences. And after choosing and ordering the products, the online marketplace operators deliver the products to them on behalf of the sellers.
B2B multi-vendor marketplaces:
On B2B marketplaces, sellers can offer and sell products at the wholesale rate to other businesses. For examples, Alibaba, Walmart are the two most popular B2B multi-vendor online marketplaces.
C2C multi-vendor marketplaces:
On C2C multi-vendor marketplaces, customers can directly sell to other customers without spending a single penny for the advertisements. OLX and Taobao are known as popular C2C multi-vendor online marketplaces.
These online marketplaces are simply making our lives easy as it is not possible for people to buy or sell products at physical stores. People are busy nowadays and because of their hectic schedules, online marketplaces are helping them browse through the sites and choose the products they want.
Even if anyone is willing to buy or sell products online, they can do that through the C2C multi-vendor online marketplaces. They are able to simply advertise the products with descriptions and people can choose the products to contact the sellers for buying.
With the help of these multi-vendor online marketplaces, people are able to easily access various sites to choose the services or products they want. So, it is quite simple to understand why these marketplaces are growing amazingly.
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