Shoppers looking for a brand are increasingly more likely to visit a marketplace to find it than a brand website or a retailer, the first RetailX Brands and Marketplaces report, published in association with ChannelAdvisor, suggests.
RetailX research, carried out in partnership with RetailX Knowledge Partner SimilarWeb, finds that more than half of traffic to the 500 brands listed in the RetailX Brand Index 2021 now goes to marketplaces. That’s true for both UK brands (55% of traffic in search of UK brands goes to marketplaces) and even more so for brands that are in EEA countries (60%).
The shift has come as more people have gone online to make more of their retail purchases during the Covid-19 pandemic, and have chosen to buy from sites that they are familiar with, very often marketplaces.
RetailX editor-in-chief Ian Jindal says: “Marketplaces were already very often the first port of call for UK and European customers looking to buy products from leading brands before the pandemic. Since Covid-19 the shift towards marketplaces has accelerated fast. For many brands that means adapting to new ways of selling or looking again at their marketplaces strategy. Today marketplaces are a platform for selling, sitting alongside brand website as a key part of direct-to-consumer strategies.”
The RetailX Brands and Marketplaces report explores how brands and marketplaces are adapting their strategies in the light of that shift towards marketplaces. It features interviews with brand and marketplace leaders from Hotter Shoes to Amazon brand aggregator Elevate Brands, and from eBay to SecretSales.
It considers how marketplaces are building trust with both customers and with brands, and it investigates the strategies that leading retailers are taking in order to gain the most from selling on marketplaces, alongside their other direct and wholesale channels.
Download the RetailX Brands and Marketplaces report here, read our other marketplace reports here, and our wider RetailX research here.
