Third-party websites have become a new retail trend! More and more merchants are doing this

Amazon has been trying to take a bigger share of the grocery market for years. The ever-expanding Amazon private label has clearly exposed this ambition , but unlike giants like Amazon, foreign retailers are taking a different path.

In the last month , Canadian department store chain Hudson 's Bay, clothing brand Lands' End and grocery wholesaler United Natural Foods have all launched new pages on their websites that allow select third-party brands to sell products there .

This is not the first time that retail and grocery brands such as Urban Outfitters, Kroger, Ahold Delhaize and Anthropologie have provided marketplaces for third-party sellers in the past few years .

This is part of an overall market trend, not just in the retail sector , but also in giants like Google, Facebook, TikTok and Yahoo . But for companies like Google and Kroger , their goal is to enhance their core advertising business, because the combination of advertising and third-party entry can achieve more direct conversion rates.

However, as more and more retail websites join this ranks, this third-party model started by Amazon is making waves in the retail industry . In fact, as e-commerce competition intensifies, more and more retail brands are trying to maintain their competitiveness by increasing consumer options .

However, this road is not easy. Just like the development history of Lands'End 's third-party sellers, after the first test last summer, Lands'End officially opened its market at the end of March. When it was first launched, there were only 24 sellers registered. Although there is no limit on the scale of cooperating brands, it has high requirements for third-party sellers , including the need to have independent logistics capabilities, so it was not smooth at the beginning. In addition, customer service consultation and product management during the operation process are areas that need coordination.

Although the model of third-party sellers is to learn from Amazon, these retailers are also trying their best to avoid becoming Amazon. They hope to control the number of third-party sellers to keep their websites attractive in the market and have a certain competitiveness under giant e-commerce companies like Amazon . At the same time, they control the categories of goods provided by the website so that they can achieve the ideal state when facing consumers - consumers have abundant choices but are not dazzled.

And how to make use of the existing number of loyal customers and mature website traffic, but not to the extent that third parties affect their physical sales, retailers need to make plans and decisions on this balance point. It seems too early to draw a conclusion about this new online retail model.

Retailers