"Brands today have a growing number of options to build out enhanced official storefronts on global marketplaces reaching hundreds of millions of online shoppers in the process," write Forrester Research analysts Zia Daniell Wigder and Lily Varon in a new report.
The new report highlights our own marketplace eBay, noting that “global offerings are growing rapidly,” and that eBay has “taken innovative steps to tap into the cross-border online shopper.”
As just one example of growth in cross-border trade on our marketplace, eBay China Vice President John Lin recently said that China currently accounts for 250 of eBay’s 1,000 biggest sellers globally.
The Forrester report also highlights Amazon, Rakuten, MercadoLibre, and Alibaba’s Tmall as influential global marketplaces. At the same time, the report makes clear that brands must be aware of marketplaces’ shortcomings as well as their strengths.
"Many global marketplaces are known for providing discounts on products, and creative options on some marketplaces can be quite limited,” Wigder and Varon said in the report. “Additionally, many marketplaces don't share as much data on online shoppers' purchase behavior as businesses would like to see…Where many marketplaces fall short is in providing brands with information on their customers' purchase paths.”
Above all, the Forrester report emphasizes that large, global marketplaces can provide easy access to hundreds of millions of consumers. This represents a big opportunity for brands that want to reach consumers outside their local markets.
In some cases large global marketplaces are also designing custom storefronts for brands. The report again highlighted our strength.
“In addition to the eBay Fashion Gallery and Outlet offerings, eBay has built a few customized storefronts for apparel brands,” write Wigder and Varon. “For example, Superdry operates a branded eBay Store in the U.K. Additionally, part of eBay's proposition is the fact that it can migrate growing businesses from marketplace sellers to standalone sites through the use of eBay Enterprise solutions.”
You can get more information on Forrester’s report here.