Profitability: The Marketplace Conundrum: Short-Term Sales Versus Long-Term Value
(Room Skyline Ballroom C)
06 Jun 18
3:15 PM
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3:45 PM
Tracks:
Strategies for Top Executives
Finding customers at scale online has become more challenging, and some retailers and brands are turning to marketplaces to help them increase top-line revenue. But there is an inherent push-pull to this equation. Due to rules set by marketplace operators, marketplace customers are customers of the marketplace, not the merchant providing the product, meaning a merchant’s marketplace sales are often just that: sales logged in the ledger and not much else. In selling through marketplaces, a merchant pays a cut of each sale to the marketplace, making the price of acquiring the first sale the same as the cost of acquiring the 100th—it never declines. In this session, speakers will take a strategic view in exploring the pros and cons of engaging in marketplace sales, addressing the impact greater sales volume marketplaces can provide and the ongoing the cost of acquiring those sales. It will also look at the cost of other digital customer and sales acquisition methods and their potential to impact the bottom line in the long-term, such as nurturing repeat buyers.