Amazon Dominates International Reach Among Marketplaces

Amazon is definitely taking over the world. According to the Website Builder Expert’s project, which used data from Alexa Internet, Amazon currently holds the first place in population reached, reaching a whopping 1.2 billion people in 58 countries.

The second place goes to the Chinese multinational conglomerate, the Alibaba Group, which reaches roughly 1.1 billion people across 15 countries. The WBE report shows that the Seattle-based Internet giant is the leading e-commerce company in North America, Western Europe, and India, while Alibaba remains the leader in Asia.

Marketplaces are reaching an incredibly high peak these days. According to a new report by Juniper Research, a digital commerce and fintech consulting firm from England, e-commerce could account for 13% of global retail sales by 2020. That’s $3.8 trillion of the $30 trillion global market.

According to Euromonitor International, a global market intelligence publisher, 40% of all e-commerce sales were conducted through a marketplace model in 2017, which is almost double of the sales in 2013 (23%). Euromonitor International reported that Amazon Marketplace played a huge part in that sales growth, accounting for 87% of it, white it is on pace to capture half of U.S. e-commerce market by the end of 2018.

Half of the online retail sales came from marketplaces in 2016, as is stated in a Forrester Research report, and the growth trend continues to this day. The biggest player is now Amazon, followed by Alibaba (Tmall), JD.com and eBay.

The Internet giant became the second U.S. company to reach $1 trillion in market value, right after Apple hit the mark in early August. Although Amazon stock hit that mark for the first time ever, it did so very briefly, as the stock had quickly fallen off at roughly $995 billion, leaving Apple back at the first place of a publicly-traded U.S. company that has a market cap of over $1 trillion.

Nevertheless, Amazon Marketplace keeps soaring more than ever. Amazon Business, the giant’s business-to-business platform, hit $10 billion in global sales only one year after launching the platform in 2015. Operating in eight countries, Amazon Business continues reaching incredibly high sales numbers to this day.

South America and Mexico are the two biggest markets that Amazon is targeting for the past couple of years. However, it is a bit hard to establish a stronghold there, as MercadoLibre, Walmart, and Inditex have been operating there for a long time.

Amazon does have a huge international reach and its global sales are continually increasing, but it still seems to be losing money. According to its latest Annual Report (10k), the company has lost $3 billion in international business in 2017.

Amazon is the leader in e-commerce in India, where e-commerce is growing at an exponential rate. However, the company has a major competitor there as well – Walmart, which recently became Flipkart’s biggest shareholder. Walmart paid $16 billion for the majority stake in Flipkart, which is one of the largest platforms for e-commerce in India.

Northeastern Europe has a big Norwegian player, Schibsted, while Australia is where eBay has the strongest foothold. Africa has Be Forward, a Japanese used cars exporter, as its biggest e-commerce retail platform, but it is greatly threatened by Jumia, a German e-commerce website.

Amazon recently acquired a Dubai-based marketplace Souq, which is referred to as “the Amazon of the Middle East”.

We are certain to witness a lot more similar acquisitions in the near future, not only by Amazon but also by its other major global competitors, as they can target new international markets much easier that way.