The Marketplace Strategy Blog

Kahuna partnered with Altimeter Research and digital futurist Brian Solis on a first-of-its-kind research report on the state of digital marketplaces. This original research is based on a survey on managers and executives at 100 leading marketplaces. The survey questions spanned business strategy and execution questions, with the result compiled by the data science team at Altimeter. Brian Solis delivers a sharp narrative that connects the rise of online marketplaces to the emerging platform economy and the well-established evolution of customer experiences, the latter of which he has been a leading voice on.

Last week, Mirakl participated in the inaugural Platform Economy Summit Europe—a gathering of the most influential platform business innovators to catalyze this revolutionary business model across the continent.

While companies in the US and China have already adopted a platform mindset, their European counterparts are lacking are lagging. Today, seven of the world’s ten most valuable companies are platform businesses; yet not one of them is European. 60% of the ‘Unicorn’ billion-dollar start-ups are platform businesses, and only a small proportion were born in Europe.

B2B purchasing habits are changing the way sellers engage their customers, and marketplaces are at the digital forefront. In our  with B2B Online, Oracle Commerce Cloud, and WBR Insights, we made some uplifting discoveries about how age groups among B2B buyers are redefining B2B sales. Digital channels, including marketplaces, have emerged as the clear, transformative favorites among the youngest buyers in the workforce—Millennials, born from 1977 to 1995.

[Guest Post from Applico]

As tech giants like Amazon enter the B2B distribution sector, traditional companies have responded with two broad strategies: digital innovation, and mergers and acquisitions. But those two terms cover a breadth of activity, not all of which will be equally helpful in competing with Amazon Business. The success of either approach depends heavily on how deeply a company understands the nature of Amazon’s threat.

Two numbers inspired the creation of our Guide to Commerce for Manufacturers. First, Forrester estimates that US B2B eCommerce is about to hit $1 trillion. Second, B2B eCommerce World found that only 40% of US Manufacturers have an eCommerce platform, which means 60% of Manufacturers aren’t able to serve customers where they want to buy. That’s a pretty big gap. At SMITH, it’s our job to help manufacturers better serve their current & future customers.