Amazon, eBay and PayPay Mall have been able to make the most of this new type of business, the marketplace, responding to an increasingly dynamic and circular economy. dynamic and circular. As a result, they have become the top three marketplaces making up the 60% of the sector's business. The marketplace concept as a web platform has become increasingly relevant, as analysed in our Tailor-madeThe first smartphones appeared, giving users the possibility to access the Internet in a quick and easy way.
The main objective of the circular economy is to make the most of the company's available resources to 100%, with an emphasis on generating a benefit for society, beyond the economic one, and on reducing the waste that companies may produce as a result of their activity.
Marketplaces, being online platforms, drastically reduce this potential waste by creating an increasingly sustainable environment. Moreover, these platforms are the result of a continuous search for zero marginal cost, i.e. to minimise their costs by making the most of each of their available resources. Thanks to the digital transformation of Industry 4.0Nowadays, there are companies that achieve this zero margin without any effort, i.e. they do not have a fixed cost when including a new product in their sales catalogue, as they only have to describe the article on their website and that's it!
The ultimate aim of these marketplaces is to offer a platform where sellers and buyers meet so that the former can satisfy the wants or needs of the latter through their offer. The offer on these platforms is immensely greater than what anyone can find in an establishment, which is the key to their success.
Top 3The best marketplaces
PayPay Mall, owned by Yahoo
Let's start with the third of the marketplace leaders, PayPay Mall. You may not know the name of this Japanese company, but it is positioned as the third of the top marketplaces according to the number of revenue it earned in 2019, just over 10 billion dollars. This company launched by the Yahoo in 2018, has already established itself in the Japanese and global market, achieving more than 2 billion visits every month, almost all of them in its home country. As it defines it simply Softbankthe company's main investor, PayPay Mall has created a direct sales mall that primarily uses PayPay, an online payment application.
eBay, electronic auctions
One of the best marketplaces is eBay which is second only to Amazon. The popular marketplace, founded in 1995 and IPO'd in September 1998, connects a worldwide network of buyers and sellers, who sell or buy products through auctions using the PayPal payment application to ensure secure transactions. eBay earned a total revenue of almost $11 billion in 2019, all thanks to more than 1.5 billion monthly page views in 2019.
Amazon, leading marketplace
Finally, the big competitor and the best among the best marketplaces is the giant Amazon. Founded in 1994 and floated on the stock exchange on 15 May 1997, the company presented a revenue exorbitant in 2019: 280 billion dollars. This is how Amazon consolidates its position as the world's largest marketplace. At the same time, as is logical, it is also the leader in terms of monthly visits to its website; 5.7 billion, more visits than the sum of its two direct competitors already mentioned.
Part of the marketplace's growth is due to its inorganic growth, making dozens of acquisitionsThe company has been active in sectors as diverse as autonomous driving and home Wi-Fi systems.
The leaders in the sector are listed below, together with their date of foundation, the location of their headquarters and the latest revenue achieved:
