Digital marketplaces are becoming an important growth channel in retail, as global sales were projected to reach $3.8 trillion last year. To succeed in this environment, brands must adopt the right strategies to leverage these platforms’ unique advantages. One trend is the rise of hybrid marketplace models, where platforms like Amazon sell both directly and through third-party sellers.
According to Jason Greenwood, founder and lead consultant for Greenwood Consulting, this model offers brands greater flexibility, allowing them to scale more efficiently while avoiding the complexities of managing inventory and logistics. Hybrid models also enable brands to offer a broader product range without the overhead of holding all the inventory themselves.
“This is becoming very common, particularly in the B2B [business-to-business] eCommerce space,” Greenwood explained to PYMNTS. “Many B2B manufacturers are also ‘distributors’ of certain products in their catalog, and it’s often easier to create a marketplace for these third-party products versus simply passing the order to the third party for fulfillment or trying to hold inventory of all items yourself.
“The reason for this is that in a marketplace scenario, the seller not only holds the stock, but also loads all the product details into the marketplace themselves and sets their own pricing and shipping rules, meaning it is much faster and easier to onboard these sellers into your distribution network instead of being the seller of record for all items in your online store.”
This approach, however, requires more than just an efficient onboarding process, Greenwood noted.
“To succeed on marketplaces, brands must have the technical ability to be channel agnostic,” Greenwood explained. “This means they have the technical ability to list their products easily, download and ship orders quickly, and provide amazing customer service should something go wrong along the way.
“Most marketplaces have strict rules around product attributes, categorization, listing details, shipping times, and many other facets of trading on their platform. If a brand cannot meet these requirements, their listings may be blocked, pushed further down search results, or other penalties levied, ranging from a simple warning to having their seller account blocked temporarily or banned altogether.”
As highlighted by the PYMNTS Intelligence “How the World Does Digital” report, which drew from a survey of 67,000 consumers across 11 countries that make up about half of the world’s gross domestic product, the rising popularity of digital marketplaces is evident: 1 in 4 consumers shop on these platforms weekly, particularly among wealthier and younger consumers. Twenty-one percent of consumers engage in online shopping each week, and that share rises to 27% for high-income shoppers and 35% for Generation Z.
Greenwood, however, points out limited data sharing on these platforms prevents sellers from directly engaging with customers, which hinders their ability to fully leverage the platforms for customer engagement.
“Many marketplaces keep buyer details under lock and key apart from buyer names and delivery addresses,” he added. “This is because they typically consider buyer data to be their customers’ data and not customer data belonging to the third-party sellers on their platform.
“This means that, typically, the only way a seller can communicate with their marketplace customers is via delivery parcel inserts or direct mailings. Many brands will attempt to leverage marketplaces purely as customer acquisition channels and then try to redirect customers to their own eCommerce sites via printed/inserted QR codes and special promotions or other physical mailing methods.”
As William Harris, CEO of Elumynt, explained in an interview with PYMNTS, brands must consider several factors when adopting marketplace models, but often overlook the most important one.
“One of the most critical pieces that I see brands miss is the conversation around profit,” Harris said. “When you’re comparing your D2C [direct-to-consumer] website versus a marketplace, you can’t just use the same CAC [customer acquisition cost].
“If you’re willing to pay $50 for a $200 purchase on your website, that’s likely worth more to you than a $50 CAC for a $200 purchase on a marketplace where you will need to factor in the marketplace fee.
“Additionally, on your website, you captured that customer’s email address and have the ability to upsell them, driving more LTV [lifetime value] compared with the marketplace.
“You should absolutely be on marketplaces in addition to your own D2C site, but you have to at least be aware of how the numbers need to change to reflect what you are giving up on the marketplaces.”
Job cuts in government, technology and retail led the way as U.S. employers announced the largest number of cuts in one month since May 2020.
Among the 275,240 job cuts announced in March, 216,215 were in government, 15,055 were in technology and 11,709 were in retail, Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in a report released Thursday (April 3).
“Job cut announcements were dominated last month by Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) plans to eliminate positions in the federal government,” Andrew Challenger, senior vice president and workplace expert for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in the report. “It would have otherwise been a fairly quiet month for layoffs.”
The total number of job cuts made in March was more than three times the 90,309 cuts announced in March 2024, according to the report.
By sector, compared to March 2024, government job cuts were almost six times higher, technology cuts were about 6% higher and retail cuts were nearly twice as high, per the report.
All the government job cuts made in March occurred in the federal government, the report said.
The top reason employers gave for cutting jobs in March was “DOGE impact,” which was cited for 216,670 of the month’s cuts, according to the report.
Other common reasons included store, unit or department closing, to which 17,666 job cuts were attributed, and market/economic conditions, which accounted for 11,594 cuts, per the report.
Challenger, Gray & Christmas also said in the report that employers are planning to hire fewer workers than they were a year ago. Companies’ hiring plans dropped by about 37%, from 21,102 in March 2024 to 13,198 in March 2025, according to the report.
The specter of uncertain job security may accelerate a spending pullback that is already in motion, PYMNTS reported Wednesday (April 2). Consumer confidence that was already shaken may have been further impacted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest snapshot of the labor market released Tuesday (April 1), which found that the labor market slowed in February, with a decline in job openings over the past year.
The Conference Board reported March 25 that consumer confidence slipped for the fourth straight month in March, due in part to a plunge in consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business and labor market conditions.
