New Google marketplace looks set to officially join the arena of commercial dealings in France which is speculated in the media to present competition to Amazon.
Google Marketplace features
Google Shopping is looking to introduce its marketplace in early January in France to see small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) offering their goods to shoppers, as reported initially by LSA. Merchants will see their payment operations being handled by Google and will be taking care of their last mile experiences individually. They will be able to provide consumers with products across categories such as technology, health and beauty, games, toys as well as food. French shoppers will only need to press ‘buy with Google’ button to finalise their purchase, and in future, they would be able to shop via Google Assistant.
The soon-to-be marketplace is currently testing its site with third-party retailers including Auchan, Boulanger, Carrefour and Fnac Darty. Google will earn a lower commission for every merchant sale conducted on the platform than the one required by Amazon.
Merchants that aim to join Google’s new marketplace will be using a set of available Google tools. They will need to register here for a Google Merchant Centre account so they can add their products offering to the marketplace. Sellers can also manage their advertising strategy via Google Shopping Actions to make their products more visible to shoppers.
Will the marketplace present competition to Amazon?
My colleague, Chris Dawson has previously written about Google adding marketplace type of features in the US to their paid search offering with Google Shopping Actions. Their initiative saw new ways of purchasing for shoppers on Google Assistant and buyers paying only for a successful sale. Google’s previous attempts have shown that the search engine is attempting to grab a financial opportunity in the marketplace arena. But will the new entrant present competition to Amazon? Probably not in the near future. Considering the rate at which Amazon is growing, I doubt that Google will be able to catch up with the 24-years old work the marketplace have undertaken to get to their current position. It also seems like Google already feel the failure before success by attempting to somehow differentiate themselves with lower commision fees for merchants’ sales. Perhaps, Google should have jumped on the marketplace bandwagon when we saw Amazon and eBay emerge in the mid-90’s?
On the other hand, now that they have watched failure and success points in the leading marketplaces’ journeys, Google might be able to build a solid business strategy based on others experiences? However, we are now left to see another big or unlucky marketplace materialise. What’s your opinion?
8 Responses
Your link to the Google MERChant Centre account is useless as as far as Google are concerned it seems that the neither the UK notr the|US exist. There is a dropdown where you have to select in which country your business is located, but you can’t find UK or US
I have used your link and created an account but seen no “set of available tools” nor any way of emailing a question. Perhaps one has to visit from time to time to see if anything appears in this “merchant centre” ? I am a small business on ebay fr and upon reading your article had this fantasy of joining the beta !..
It seems this new marketplace does have some appeal as all the readers are clicking on the link you shared to enroll
Inside the Merchant Center, I searched for ” shopping actions “. There is a phone N° in the US. All the other resources seem related to pay per click things; So, @Kasia ,if I enroll it’s not going to be on the marketplace at all.
It seems it’s going to be more complicated than opening an account on eBay and start creating and publishing listings …
Thanks,James. There are video tutorials about small inventory feed but those I have found refer to pay per click. I have just received a ” google merchant centre/submit your product info ” email and would be prepared to try submitting something if I knew I could at the end direct the listing to marketplace; An email address at which to enquire, anyone ?!
Does it mean that there will be no need to optimise the Google shopping account ?
Then, Fnac darty is yet a marketplace, why do SMB need to puttheir product in Gg marketplace again ?