Online marketplaces have famous names – Amazon, Alibaba, eBay, Taobao, JD.com – but whatever they’re called and wherever they operate, marketplaces have achieved almost 100% B2C market penetration amongst online shoppers.
The survey evaluated more than 4,000 responses from Asia/Pacific; 7,000 from the Americas; and 6,000 from Europe.
On average, 96% of surveyed consumers made an online purchase from a marketplace in the three months before this study, says UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper report.
Retailers are picking up on this trend by joining marketplaces where visibility, reach and trust are powerful sales-triggers to stay in business.
Marketplaces also appear to be a go-to-place for B2B purchases, with about half of the surveyed businesses use online platforms to purchase and plan to increase their purchasing spend more in the next three to five years – presenting opportunities for merchants to target both business and consumers.
How does the 2019 shopper research purchases?
Online shoppers use various platforms. Half normally use search engines including Google, Bing, Baidu. On the other hand, 43% search on Amazon, while about one in three (34%) go to the retailer/reseller website.
Different territories trust research from different sources. In Brazil, 48% of online shoppers check out comparative pricing websites. Chinese online shoppers use multiple social media sites (31%).
In South Korea, 64% of shoppers prefer price comparison sites, while another 42% like consumer review sites.
Online shoppers in Poland review price comparison websites (51%) and retailer/seller websites (45%).
Amazon is the go-to research source in Canada (57%); France (53%); Germany (54%); Italy (64%); Spain (52%); and in the US (58%).
Amazon matters, even when consumers don’t buy there More than half (56%) of online shoppers with access to Amazon Prime start their research on Amazon, compared to 40% of shoppers generally.
Meanwhile, 57% of online shoppers without access to Prime start their research on a search engine. One in three (31%) of Gen Z online shoppers, the very youngest, researches through social media.
