The highlights of the EffectConnect Marketplaces Event 2021 - 2/2

Increasing number of sellers on marketplaces

Kaufland.de and bol.com are both open marketplaces, which means that basically every seller can subscribe to the platform. These platforms ensure quality by offering support in the field of e-learnings and marketing. 

HomeDeco is a closed platform. A thorough selection procedure upfront is followed to check whether a seller is a good fit to the marketplace. The partner dashboard aids in proper reporting, which ensures happy partners. Wish has a dedicated team of local accountmanagers to support local sellers properly.
The marketplaces do not expect a decrease in the amount of sellers. Consumers will keep online shopping as a standard in their buying behaviour and sellers know how it works, so they might be inclined to add new categories faster. 

Logistic developments

Logistics was a bottleneck for many sellers last year, mainly the dependency on one carrier. Marketplaces now also support the sellers more on logistics. bol.com offers Logistics via bol.com (LvB). As a seller, you can then benefit from the logistic scale of bol.com (fast delivery, warehouse bol.com) and hereby increase your conversion rate. 

Wish offers a returns program to relieve your organisation in the field of returns. Research from Wish has shown that sellers who participate in the returns program, have 30% less returns compared to sellers who aren't participating in this program.

The impact of brands and resellers on marketplaces

The growth of marketplaces also caused a transition in the type of organisations active on these platforms. More and more, brands find their way to marketplaces. We discussed the impact of D2C sales for brands on marketplaces, and mainly the impact on the relation with resellers.

The marketplaces view it as a healthy development to have brands and resellers operate on the same platform. Brands often bring high quality content and resellers add value in the field of delivery.

Brands often don't have the infrastructure in place to sell on marketplaces. Wish for example set up cooperations between resllers and brands to sell together on the platform. Resellers then can use the brand account and brands can use the infrastructure of resellers. In this way, they can both exist on the platform.  

It is very well possible for brands and resellers to sell next to each other, and sometimes together, on marketplaces. The marketplaces experts pointed out: it all comes down to understanding your target group, think about your online sales strategy, which products you want to sell and what USPs make you stand out from the rest. As a reseller, make sure you can make a difference on operational performance, because direct competition is difficult. As a brand, make sure you become content owner so you can keep control over the product information that is used to showcase your brand on marketplaces. 

Do you want to sell on one of the marketplaces that participated in our event? Here you can find an overview with facts and figures that might help you to make a choice.