Marketplace
A marketplace (online marketplace) is a digital commerce platform on which many merchants offer their products to the operator’s customer base through a single, operator-provided sales channel. The operator – for example Amazon, eBay, Otto or Kaufland – supplies reach, payment and sometimes logistics, and charges commissions and fees in return.
A marketplace (online marketplace) is a digital commerce platform on which an operator lets many independent merchants sell their products to its existing customer base through a shared sales channel. The operator – well-known examples are Amazon, eBay, Otto, Kaufland or Zalando – brings supply and demand together: it provides the reach, the platform infrastructure, the payment process and often parts of the logistics, while the actual sellers are responsible for assortment, prices and usually shipping. In exchange, the marketplace charges sales commissions plus, in most cases, additional base and service fees.
The decisive difference from running your own online shop lies in who owns the channel and the customer. In your own shop the merchant fully controls appearance, data and the customer relationship, but has to build the reach alone. On a marketplace the merchant taps into ready-made reach and the platform’s trust, but submits to its rules, fee models and ranking mechanisms – and the customer belongs first to the marketplace, not to the merchant. Marketplaces are therefore a central building block of multichannel and omnichannel commerce and, for many merchants, the highest-reach yet most heavily regulated sales channel.
At a glance
- Platform where many merchants sell to the operator’s customer base through one shared channel
- Operator supplies reach, payment and sometimes logistics – in exchange for commission and fees
- Difference from your own shop: outside reach, but outside rules and little customer ownership
- Core risk: overselling and account suspensions – stock must stay in sync across all channels
- ERP as the hub: connects marketplaces via connectors and keeps stock, prices and orders in sync
What is a marketplace – and what types are there?
A marketplace mediates between many suppliers and many buyers on a shared platform. Unlike an online shop that sells goods in its own name, the marketplace operator acts predominantly as an intermediary: it provides the sales space, the trust of the brand and the technical processing, while the sale is legally concluded between merchant and end customer. To the buyer the assortment feels as if it comes from a single source, even though hundreds or thousands of individual merchants stand behind it.
There are several basic types. Horizontal marketplaces such as Amazon or eBay cover almost all product categories and aim for maximum reach. Vertical or niche marketplaces focus on one segment – for example Zalando in fashion or ManoMano in home improvement – and address a specific target group. Cutting across this is the split by target customer: B2C marketplaces address end consumers, B2B marketplaces such as Mercateo or Amazon Business address commercial buyers. A special case are hybrid models, in which the operator additionally sells as its own merchant (first party) on its platform and thus competes with the external sellers.
Marketplace, shop and multichannel
A marketplace is a single sales channel, not a sales model in itself. When a merchant sells in parallel through its own shop, several marketplaces and brick-and-mortar, this is called multichannel; when these channels are interlinked into one consistent customer experience, it is called omnichannel. In this structure the marketplace mainly delivers reach and new buyer segments, while the merchant’s own shop secures margin and customer ownership. Most growing merchants deliberately combine both.
How a marketplace works: roles, models and fees
On a marketplace three roles meet: the operator (platform), the merchant (seller) and the end customer. The merchant creates its offers according to the platform’s specifications – product data, images, prices, stock – and is bound by its category structure, quality guidelines and returns rules. The operator controls visibility and ranking, handles payment and pays out the proceeds minus its fees to the merchant periodically.
For fulfillment there are two basic variants. Under FBM (Fulfillment by Merchant) the merchant stores, packs and ships itself; under FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) or comparable programs on other platforms, the merchant hands the goods to the marketplace, which takes over storage, shipping and customer service. Financially, two fee types dominate: a percentage sales commission depending on the product category (often 7–15 percent, sometimes more) plus fixed base or account fees and optional costs for fulfillment, advertising and add-on services. This fee burden noticeably erodes the margin and has to be factored into pricing.
Why marketplaces matter – benefits and risks
The greatest benefit of a marketplace is immediately available reach. Instead of building its own traffic over years, a merchant taps into millions of purchase-ready visitors who trust the platform. That lowers the barrier to entry considerably: a new product can be visible within days, without investment in shop infrastructure and customer acquisition. For reach, revenue diversification and testing new assortments, marketplaces are therefore often the fastest route.
The opportunities are offset by structural risks. Dependence on the operator is high: rule changes, fee increases or – in the worst case – an account suspension can make revenue collapse overnight. The merchant also competes in a price-transparent environment directly with many suppliers of the same product, which pushes down the margin. And the customer relationship stays with the marketplace: the merchant usually does not get buyer data for its own marketing. Marketplaces are therefore a strong but not a sole channel – combining them with your own shop reduces concentration risk.
Marketplace in the ERP system
As soon as a merchant serves more than one channel, the ERP or inventory management system becomes the central hub that also connects the marketplaces. Via interfaces or ready-made connectors, orders from Amazon, eBay and co. flow into unified order processing; from there the ERP reports available stock and current prices back to the platforms. That way all channels access the same, up-to-date stock level – the prerequisite for avoiding oversells, which are especially costly on marketplaces because they worsen cancellation rates and seller ratings.
In practice the system takes on several tasks: it mirrors stock almost in real time, can distribute stock deliberately across channels (for example holding back a buffer), reconciles channel-specific prices and merges all orders into one process for picking, shipping, invoicing and returns. Product data ideally comes from a connected PIM and is output in a marketplace-compliant way, since every platform requires its own mandatory attributes and category trees. Many ERP and inventory management systems geared toward online retail already ship with such marketplace connectors.
Stock synchronization as the critical point
The critical point of any marketplace connection is cross-channel inventory management. When the marketplace sells the last unit, your own shop and every other channel must immediately mark it as unavailable – otherwise an oversell occurs, which on platforms such as Amazon feeds directly into the seller account’s performance metrics. A central stock source in the ERP, maintained in real time or near real time, is therefore not optional but a basic operating requirement for marketplace trade.
DACH specifics and legal framework
In the German-speaking region the marketplace landscape is broader than the picture of Amazon and eBay suggests: Otto, Kaufland and Zalando have opened their platforms to third-party sellers, plus B2B marketplaces such as Mercateo. Anyone selling here is subject to German or Austrian consumer law – for example the right of withdrawal, information obligations and price-labeling requirements – regardless of the fact that the channel is a marketplace.
Fiscally and in regulatory terms, special obligations apply. In Germany marketplace operators can under certain circumstances be liable for their merchants’ unpaid VAT and therefore require proof of a valid tax registration before they activate a seller. Cross-border B2C sales are reported centrally via the EU-wide OSS procedure (One-Stop-Shop). In addition, the platform tax transparency obligation (DAC7/PStTG) applies, under which marketplaces transmit their merchants’ sales data to the tax authorities. For a clean setup, these reports must match the posting and revenue data from the ERP – another reason to map the channel properly in the system.
Example
Example: A merchant adds marketplaces to its own shop
A mid-sized retailer of household goods successfully ran its own online shop, but hit a reach ceiling as it grew: acquiring new customers became increasingly expensive. To open up additional buyer segments, the company listed its core assortment on Amazon and Kaufland. The effect was immediate – the marketplaces brought orders from customers who would never have found the shop. At first, however, the team maintained stock in each channel by hand, which led to oversells and the first warnings due to poor seller metrics.
The solution was connecting the marketplaces to the existing ERP system. The item master and stock now sit centrally, connectors link the shop, Amazon and Kaufland, and a PIM supplies the marketplace-specific mandatory attributes. When one channel sells, stock drops immediately in all the others; for the higher-margin own shop the system holds back a safety buffer. The commissions are firmly factored into the marketplace prices. Result: no more oversells, a predictable margin per channel and an assortment that can be rolled out to further platforms without extra staff.
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