The European Marketplaces 2023 report, launched on 11 October at ChannelX World, features an exclusive look at how Amazon still defines the marketplace concept and leads the world in both ecommerce and fulfilment.
Amazon is not only one of the biggest marketplaces in the world, it is also one of the largest ecommerce retailers, generating a whopping €489bn in revenues in 2022 and making a profit in excess of €64bn.
Operating across most European countries to some degree, its major markets are the UK, Germany, Italy and France. Traffic from Europe topped an astonishing four trillion visits in 2021, its peak year, and while this cooled slightly in 2022, it still remains the most-visited ecommerce site in the region.
For this reason, Amazon understandably attracts a high proportion of Europe’s Top1000 retailers and brands, with 22% of them having a seller profile and a third of the Top1000 selling products directly in the site. Many leading brands and products from well-known retailers are also sold by third parties through Amazon.
However, Amazon hosts more than 10mn sellers, as well as selling its own branded goods – across perhaps the broadest range of categories of any marketplace anywhere – so the proportion of Top1000 brands on the site appears low at 69% relative to other marketplaces. This still encompasses a vast number of well-known retail brands from companies small (45%), medium (21%) and large (34%).
Indicative of the wider ecommerce landscape, fashion apparel and accessories is the leading category on Amazon, accounting for 36% of sales. Consumer electronics is the next most popular, accounting for 15%. Again, these numbers belie just how large and wide-ranging Amazon is. These categories are just the leading ones, ahead of a very long tail of sectors on the site. While each one makes up only a tiny percentage of total sales, given the overall size of Amazon’s market, these incremental sales are themselves enormous markets.
It is worth noting that Amazon has built up a strong position in fulfilment services, with delivery and logistics operations that straddles the globe, Amazon also operates its own payments services so for merchants of all sizes, Amazon offers the full ‘soup to nuts’ for online selling, marketing, payment, delivery, collection and return.
On top of all this, Amazon owns and operates a video-on-demand service as part of its extensive Prime subscription offering and has carved out a strong presence for itself in the electronics space with a range of home gadgets such as the Firestick and Alexa-based home hub.
This profile was originally featured in the European Marketplaces 2023 report, download it in full to discover:
- What factors are key to a successful marketplace?
- What attributes do brands need from leading marketplaces?
- How are marketplaces working to try and protect both brands and customers from fraud, counterfeits, and piracy?
- What is the technology that drives this sector?
