Rented vs owned is one of the biggest points of debate when you take any important business decision, today we are going to discuss about online selling platform, and whether you should sell on marketplace or should you choose to start your own e-commerce portal.
In current times we have multiple giant online marketplace around like Amazon, Alibaba, Flipkart and emerging players as well like PayTM, Jabong, HomeShop18 and Ebay, yet they are gigantic in size if being compared to stores that are planning to go online.
Also, this is an important decision to make as the right time is now, and India is all set to surpass US and become biggest e-commerce market by year 2034. If we talk about recent time Indian market will double from $ 125 billion in year 2017 to $ 250 billion by year 2020, so decisions must be taken wisely and shall be implemented strategically.
As we do in all other comparison we will discuss this comparison on various factors and will elaborate them in brief –
Brand Value – Here your own E-commerce portal is clear winner as anybody who purchases from Marketplace, there is very less chance that he remembers the actual vendor’s name and quite fondly says that “I have purchased this product from Amazon”. If you have decent size of clients, you should try gradually shifting them to your own e-commerce and then increase the pool of your clients. This way whatever you invest is owned by you and you are not increasing the brand value of any marketplace.
Number of Sales – Marketplace being an already established player has wider reach and huge traffic, and hence we consider Marketplace is clear winner, you should consider selling your product initially to generate some kick start revenue. Millions of visitors and huge exposure makes it virtually impossible that your products remain hidden from potential customers.
Marketplace also invest millions of dollars to search engines and social media to promote their catalog
Ownership – Being owner of your own e-commerce website, you can control everything right from design, content and custom functionalities which suits your brand and product.
Starting from presentation to business logic you control everything and can manage your website, you can control recently viewed or bestsellers and at the same time you can be assured of one thing – website displays only and only your products without any distraction.
Referrals – Please refer to point of “Brand Value” once more, as any buyer of your product purchasing from online marketplace, is most likely to take name of the Marketplace instead of your brand if he purchases your product through Marketplace, and hence you loose potential customer, however if you make sale through your own website then your customer refer your brand name to their contacts, and hence you start selling through reference in no time.
Credibility – Being a new player you require lot of time to gain trust of your visitors while Marketplace has large existing user-base and you can gain revenue by selling your products on existing platforms.
Hereby we conclude that if you are entry level player then you should consider playing both the cards simultaneously, and gradually shift your entire focus to your own e-commerce platform. We can help you in building your brand reputation and increasing your revenue