Online Marketplace Sales Slow

The Top 100 online marketplaces in the world collectively grew total gross merchandise value (GMV), which includes both first- and third-party sales, by 18.1 per cent to $3.23 trillion in 2021, says Digital Commerce 360’s ‘2022 Global Online Marketplaces Report.’ However, that is a dramatic slowdown from the 31.4 per cent growth seen in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic kept shoppers out of brick-and-mortar stores and accelerated eCommerce. First-party sellers who dominated the space have moved to second place and long-standing assumptions about sellers fell by the wayside. The growth last year is slower than the 19 per cent and 21 per cent GMV growth seen in 2019 and 2018, respectively. It also shows more than half of the top 1,000 retailers and more than half of the next 1,000 retailers sell on marketplaces.