eCommerce Marketplaces: Global Leaders

Top Online Marketplaces Worldwide: Key Insights

• Local Marketplaces vs. Global Giants: Companies like Pinduoduo, Taobao, and Coupang prove that focusing on specific regions can challenge global giants like Amazon.

• Amazon Faces Eastern Competition: While Amazon leads globally, its growth has slowed, creating opportunities for challengers like Pinduoduo and Taobao.

• Successful Regional Marketplaces: Coupang in South Korea, MercadoLibre in South America, Rakuten in Japan, and Wildberries in Russia showcase successful regional markets, offering tailored solutions to local consumers.

To keep up with global marketplace giants like Amazon, it's not always necessary to be successful in many countries. Pinduoduo shows that it is indeed possible to come dangerously close to the market leaders as a local marketplace.

And it's not just Pinduoduo that has realized that. Marketplaces such as Coupang, Rakuten and others have also figured it out. With their regional focus, they have even made it into the top 20 of the world's largest marketplaces by GMV.

Top Global Online Marketplace: Who Leads?

Although China generally leads the global eCommerce landscape, the world's largest marketplace is not a Chinese company – at least, not yet. In 2023, Amazon ranked in first place with US$728.8 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV).

However, after a bigger peak along the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2021, Amazon incurred losses in growth in 2022. Since then, annual growth has been declining and this trend is expected to continue. While the YoY growth rate for 2023 is still at 9.1%, it is expected to fall to 1.9% by 2025, according to our projections.

This is still a significant amount of revenue, but Amazon's analysts should be aware of the competition coming from the East. According to our projections, Pinduoduo – the world's second-largest online marketplace with a GMV of US$580 billion – could grow by 12.8% in 2024, bringing it very close to the leader.

Last year, Pinduoduo overtook its biggest Chinese rival, Alibaba Group's Taobao, which has a GMV of US$541.3 billion. Time will tell if this is enough to knock Amazon off its throne – it will be interesting to see how things develop.

Marketplaces Outside the China-U.S. Global Battle

Looking more closely at our ranking, the top 10 is dominated by markets with a strong focus on either China or the U.S. One reason for the notable focus on China is the country's second-largest population worldwide, which will reach 1.41 billion in 2023.

However, it does not necessarily take a large population to achieve a large GMV as a local marketplace. In the top 20, there are more local marketplaces that do not have a China or US focus:

• Coupang: The local marketplace concentrates almost entirely on South Korea (99.5%) and made it to tenth place in the global ranking with US$49.7 billion in GMV in 2023, despite difficulties in recent years.

• MercadoLibre: The international marketplace follows closely behind Coupang, with a GMV of US$37.9 billion in 2023. The online store is focused on the South American region, with a major GMV share in Brazil (47%).

• Rakuten: In 12th position comes the all-rounder Rakuten that focuses on the national sales in Japan (97.2%) and reached by that a GMV of US$28.8 billion in 2023.

• Wildberries: Launched in 2014, the hybrid marketplace reached 18th place in the global ranking in 2023, with a GMV of $18.9 billion. Its focus is mainly on Russia (94%).

Want to know more about the world's largest eCommerce marketplaces? Check out the ECDB ranking of over 315 marketplaces from all around the planet. The ranking shows that marketplace rankings are not just about eCommerce powerhouses China and the U.S.

Operators like Coupang, MercadoLibre, Rakuten and Wildberries showcase thriving regional markets and add another layer to the global online marketplace scene global online marketplace scene.