Building the Business Case for an Online Marketplace – eBook

Introduction

The last two years have seen continued growth and success of the marketplace powered by innovation and digital transformation turbocharged by the Covid 19 pandemic. Overall spending on digital initiatives has gone up significantly. Marketplaces are also seeing a lot of investor activity. Marketplaces are growing at a quicker pace than pure 1st party eCommerce both across B2C as well as B2B. For B2C, the marketplace model provides broader assortments, lower prices, and free/ expedited shipping. When it comes to B2B, the advantages are ease of finding new suppliers, transparent transactions, and faster purchase cycles.

The year 2022 is being touted as the year of marketplaces. More and more businesses are transforming their business model to become platform businesses. Two factors lead to the growth trend. First, many enterprises are now seeing the benefits of the marketplace business model where the revenue scale in a non-linear model, thereby allowing companies to scale faster. The second factor is that many enterprises are trying to take back the control of their business revenues, a massive chunk of which has been taken by marketplaces behemoths like Amazon and Walmart. In the face of this onslaught, retailers/ brands are looking at marketplaces beyond just being another channel.

So, where does one begin? McFadyen Digital has been at the forefront of the platform revolution helping Fortune 100 brands and B2B organizations take the next step in their digital commerce journey. Through our expertise in providing strategic, technical, and operational services for eCommerce/ marketplaces for over 30 years, one thing we cannot stress enough is the importance of the business case. The Marketplace business case is what is required to request internal funding for your company’s Marketplace initiative or raise capital from professional investors. Creating a business case for any initiative can be a daunting task, let alone marketplace, which comes with its own set of complexities.

Our Brand New eBook

We have published a brand-new industry-first eBook here at McFadyen called “Building the Business Case for an Online Marketplace .” The eBook will help the readers understand the marketplace business model and critical elements to consider while building a business case.

You can download the eBook here.

The eBook provides clear insights and action items to anyone building a business case and getting a marketplace project into the corporate budgeting cycle to get it approved. It clearly explains the marketplace business model that sets the stage for the most critical question – “Why do we need a marketplace.” It then explores the items that need to be considered when developing a Marketplace business case. This eBook’s heart is the eight critical considerations when building a Marketplace business case. This should help any operator/ retailer/ brand executive to get all the knowledge and insight they need to secure funding for their marketplace initiative.

The eBook is authored by Lee Riesterer, Chief Digital Officer at McFadyen Digital. Lee leads McFadyen’s Advisory Services Practice helping his clients transform their business by implementing innovative Marketplace business models or creating entirely new digitally-native Marketplace start-ups.

Here at McFadyen Digital, we seek to inform our customers, prospects, partners, and the market in general by producing well-researched and written subject matter content that contains useful information and actionable suggestions on the topics of online marketplaces, ecommerce, online marketing, and user experience. Visit our Resources Page to get access to world class marketplace content.