Marketplace ecosystem growth strategy is the work of deciding how a company competes and grows inside marketplaces it does not own: Amazon, Tmall, the app stores, the aggregators and the vertical venues that now sit between most brands and their customers. It settles whether to be there at all, on what terms, what participation does to margin and to the direct customer relationship, and how the business grows once it is in. Vivaldi has advised companies on questions of this kind since 1999, inside our experience strategy practice.
The distinction that matters most on this page is whose venue it is. Running a marketplace, setting its rules, ranking its matches and taking a cut is a platform business, and that question belongs to platform strategy. This page is the other side of the same table: you are a participant in someone else’s venue, you do not write the rules, and your strategy has to work anyway.
- Since 1999brand, commerce and ecosystem strategy
- 200+published case studies
- 10 officeson four continents
- 5xWirtschaftsWoche Best of Consulting, Strategy and Innovation
- The Interaction Fieldby our founder Erich Joachimsthaler, PublicAffairs
When companies bring us in
- Marketplace revenue is growing and contribution margin is falling, and nobody can say at what share of volume that becomes a structural problem
- A platform has moved into the category with its own label, using data generated by your listings
- Marketplace fees, fulfillment and on-venue advertising have quietly become the largest line in the commercial plan, and they are managed as three separate budgets
- The direct channel and the marketplace channel are run by different teams with different incentives, and they are now bidding against each other
- A board wants a view on entering a venue in a new market, China or Southeast Asia in particular, where the terms are different from the ones the company knows
Why a marketplace channel plan is not a marketplace strategy
Most marketplace plans we are shown are operational documents written one venue at a time. They cover catalog coverage, content quality, advertising spend, fulfillment options and a growth target. All of it is real work, and none of it answers the question the company is actually facing, which is what share of its demand it is willing to meet through venues that own the customer, the ranking and the data.
That is a strategy question because it is irreversible in practice. Participation is easy to start and difficult to unwind. Once a venue supplies a large enough share of volume, pricing, assortment and promotion are set to protect that volume, and the terms are renegotiated by the party that can walk away. By the time the dependency is visible in the margin, the option to build an alternative has usually been priced out of the plan.
The reasonable version of the opposing view is that demand has moved and a brand has to be where people are looking. That is correct, and it is not an argument for being everywhere on whatever terms are offered. It is an argument for deciding which venues are worth a dependency, what the business keeps for itself, and what has to be true for the answer to change.
What our marketplace ecosystem growth services include
1. The participation decision, venue by venue
A written verdict on where to compete, rather than a coverage plan. We look at where the demand situation actually gets decided, what each venue supplies that the company cannot reach another way, what it takes in return, and what the company would be handing over in data and in customer relationship. Companies regularly leave this stage having decided to exit a venue or to stay deliberately small on one, which is a cheaper decision to make now than after three years of volume growth has made it structural.
2. Marketplace economics and true contribution
What participation earns after everything it costs. Commission, fulfillment, returns, on-venue advertising that is functionally a second commission, promotional funding, and the price pressure the venue applies to everything the brand sells elsewhere. We build this in the terms finance already uses, by venue and by product line, so the question of whether marketplace growth is profitable growth is answered with arithmetic rather than with revenue charts.
3. Assortment, price and the role each channel plays
Which products belong on which venue, which stay direct, and why. The useful principle is that different venues serve different demand situations rather than different margin tiers, so the allocation follows what customers are trying to get done rather than what the channel conflict meeting can tolerate. The output includes the price architecture across channels and the exclusions, meaning what the company has decided not to sell where.
4. What the business keeps for itself
Participation is survivable when the brand keeps something the venue cannot supply: the reason for preference, the first-party data that drives the next product, the repeat relationship, the service that only works when the company knows who the customer is. This is where marketplace strategy meets adaptive e-commerce, and the work here is deciding which of those assets are being traded away by default and which are worth paying to protect.
5. Terms, dependency and the conditions to revisit
A dependency policy the board can hold: the share of volume above which a venue has to be treated as a structural risk, what the company would do if commission rose or if the venue launched a competing label, and which capabilities have to exist elsewhere before that happens. We write the reopening conditions down with the measure that tests them and the date they are read, because dependency decisions are only ever made early or made for you.
- AllEvery venue the category sells onThe coverage list a channel plan starts from, which is how marketplace budget ends up spread across venues nobody chose
- FewWhere the demand situation is decidedThe venues customers actually use to settle this choice, rather than the ones the category reports in
- OneThe venues worth a dependencyFiltered on contribution after fees, fulfillment and on-venue advertising, and on what the company hands over to be there
- WalkThe terms you would leave onWritten before the renewal, with the capability that has to exist elsewhere first and the date the condition is read
Marketplace revenue up and margin down?
Start with a working session with one of our partners. We will take your two largest venues, rebuild contribution after fees, fulfillment and on-venue advertising, and tell you plainly whether the growth is worth having.
How a marketplace ecosystem growth engagement works
- Diagnose. Venue by venue economics rebuilt with finance, customer research on where the demand situation is actually decided, and an honest account of what each venue currently supplies and takes. The output is a position on where the business stands today, with the reasoning written down.
- Decide. The participation decision: which venues get investment, which stay deliberately small, which the company exits, and what is kept direct. Options are stress tested against the margin and the data the company would be trading. The output is a decision with exclusions, not a coverage plan.
- Model. Assortment and price architecture across channels, the investment case for the venues that got the money, and the dependency policy with its reopening conditions. The output is something a CFO can fund and a commercial director can run.
- Embed. The measures that tell you whether the position is holding, the decision rights that stop channel conflict being settled by whoever shouts, and the handover so your teams own the policy after we leave.
Why companies choose Vivaldi for marketplace ecosystem growth
The framework behind this work is our own rather than borrowed. The Interaction Field, written by our founder Erich Joachimsthaler and published by PublicAffairs, argues that value is created between participants rather than delivered by a firm to a customer. Read from the participant’s seat, that is a sharp and uncomfortable idea: a marketplace earns because participants create value for each other on it, and a brand that contributes only listings is contributing the one thing that is easiest to replace.
Three things tend to separate the work. We are not a marketplace agency, so we have no interest in the answer being more venues and more on-venue spend. We will advise a company to exit a venue, or to stay small on one, and we have. And we write the economics in the terms finance already uses, so the participation decision is taken by the people who control the capital rather than presented to them after the fact.
Vivaldi has worked across brand, commerce and ecosystem questions since 1999, from 10 offices on four continents, and the firm has been recognized five times in the WirtschaftsWoche Best of Consulting awards for strategy and innovation.
How to evaluate a marketplace strategy consultant
Worth asking of any firm on your shortlist, including us.
- Ask what they would advise you to exit. A firm whose answer is always more venues and more coverage is selling activity, not a decision.
- Ask how they treat on-venue advertising. If it sits in the marketing budget rather than in contribution margin, the economics of participation have not been understood.
- Ask what the company keeps. A strategy that does not name the data, the relationship and the reason for preference you retain has accepted substitution as a cost of doing business.
- Ask at what share of volume a venue becomes a structural risk. A firm without a number here has no dependency policy, only an opinion.
- Ask whether they make money from execution on the venue. Advice about where to compete is worth less from a firm paid by how much you spend competing there.
Marketplace strategy consultancy, a marketplace agency or a large management consultancy?
| Criterion | Marketplace strategy consultancy | Marketplace agency | Large management consultancy |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it decides | Which venues to compete in, on what terms, and what the business keeps for itself | Listings, content, on-venue advertising and daily account performance | Channel economics inside a wider cost and operating model review |
| Starting point | The demand situation and what each venue takes in return for access | The venues you already sell on and their performance dashboards | The P and L and the operating model |
| Typical deliverables | Participation decision, contribution model by venue, channel and price architecture, dependency policy | Account strategy, media plan, content and catalog optimization, reporting | Strategy roadmap, cost baseline, business case |
| How it is paid | Fee for the decision, with no interest in how much you spend on the venue | Retainer or a share of the spend and the sales it produces | Fee for the program, usually scoped well above the channel question |
| Best when | Marketplace volume is material and the economics or the dependency are not understood | The participation decision is settled and execution is the constraint | The constraint is operational rather than the commercial position |
Related work
Marketplace questions rarely arrive alone, and several of them belong to neighboring teams.
- Platform strategy takes the opposite seat: running a venue of your own and earning from interactions between participants you do not control.
- Social commerce strategy takes selling and being discovered inside social platforms, where the venue is an attention system rather than a transaction one.
- Experience strategy is the parent practice and covers the wider question of what the company is for across every place a customer meets it.
- Customer ecosystem strategy takes the system of participants around the customer as a whole, before any single venue is chosen.
- Adaptive e-commerce strategy takes the company’s own store and how it adapts when a large share of demand is met elsewhere.
- Direct-to-consumer programs takes building the direct relationship itself, which is usually the capability a dependency policy depends on.
- Connected commerce takes the join between physical and digital buying once the channel roles are settled.
This work sits inside the experience strategy practice at Vivaldi.
Marketplace ecosystem growth strategy in the US and worldwide
We work with companies from 10 offices on four continents, which matters more for marketplace work than for most commercial questions, because the venues are not the same and neither are the rules. A position built for Amazon in the US does not transfer to Tmall and JD in China, to Mercado Libre in Latin America, or to the regional venues in Southeast Asia, where the terms, the fulfillment model and the relationship between venue and brand are different in kind rather than in degree. Engagements usually run from New York or from our European offices, with customer research done in the markets where the purchase is actually decided.
Start with the venue you depend on most
A working session on your largest marketplace: what it contributes after every cost of being there, what the business is handing over to stay, and what you would do if the terms changed next year.