The Marketplace Moment for Global Brands 

For e-commerce leaders, 2026 will be a pivotal year for international growth. Marketplaces have become one of the most powerful channels for product discovery and customer acquisition, but they also introduce new challenges around control, profitability and operational complexity. 

Recent figures highlight both the opportunity and the disruption. 
Global ecommerce sales are forecast to reach £8.5 trillion by 2026, showing that online retail continues to expand rapidly. Yet nearly 70% of online shopping baskets are abandoned, indicating that even with record levels of traffic, conversion remains a persistent challenge. 
At the same time, global online fraud losses are expected to exceed £48 billion by 2025, and almost a third of retailers say they cannot fully track customers across devices, which makes it harder to deliver personalisation and retain loyalty. 

For brands seeking to scale internationally, this means a larger potential customer base, but also more complexity. Managing localisation, logistics, compliance and pricing across multiple marketplaces requires both precision and scalability. 

As global brands refine their growth strategies, the key question becomes: how can you align your commerce needs with the capabilities of each marketplace to achieve sustainable and profitable growth? 

This article explores how to evaluate where to play and how to win, helping brand and commerce leaders build a cross-border marketplace strategy that balances growth, control and long-term value. 

1. Understand Your Commerce DNA 

Before expanding into marketplaces, start with your brand’s commercial foundations. 

Consider: 

• What are our primary growth goals: brand visibility, market share, or margin improvement? 
• How important is maintaining brand control and access to customer data? 
• Do we have the right system to localise pricing, content and fulfilment effectively? 
• For some brands, marketplaces serve as high-volume acquisition channels. For others, they complement a D2C-led strategy that focuses on loyalty and retention. 
• Understanding your own commerce DNA helps you decide whether a marketplace-first, hybrid, or D2C-led model is best suited to your international ambitions.

2. Match Marketplace Capabilities to Brand Objectives

Not every marketplace is the right fit. Each one has unique strengths, limitations and audience expectations. The goal is to align your brand’s objectives with the right platform ecosystem. 

The most successful brands are selective, choosing marketplaces that align with their audience, positioning and margin goals, rather than diluting their efforts across too many channels. 

3. Localisation and Compliance as Growth Enablers 

Success in cross-border commerce is built on relevance, not just availability. Leading brands invest in localisation across every aspect of the customer journey: 

• Pricing and promotions tailored to local market conditions and purchasing power 
• Language localisation across product pages, customer service and returns 
• Delivery expectations that meet local standards for speed and transparency 

Tax, regulatory and product compliance, particularly in categories such as beauty and nutrition, where import and labelling laws vary 

These details influence customer trust, conversion rates and marketplace performance scores. 

4. Build Marketplace Operations for Scale 

Once you have identified your priority marketplaces, operational excellence becomes critical. High-performing brands invest in systems and processes that allow them to scale efficiently: 

• Centralised catalogue and data management to maintain brand consistency 
• Automated order and fulfilment routing to improve delivery times and reduce costs 
• Unified compliance and tax management to minimise administrative complexity
• Marketplace analytics and performance tracking to inform pricing and promotional strategy 

Investing in the right systems early enables your brand to scale quickly and adapt easily to new regions or sales channels in the future. 

5. Define Success Beyond GMV 

Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) is only one part of marketplace performance. Real success comes from understanding how category dynamics, operational efficiency, and marketing levers work together to drive sustainable growth. 

Key areas to evaluate include:  

• Category growth and demand trends: Track how your target category is evolving across different marketplaces to identify where growth potential and competition are shifting. 
• Marketplace success levers: Assess how effectively your brand is using core growth drivers such as storefront optimisation, product content, SEO, and paid media opportunities. 
• True cost to serve: Go beyond headline fees by understanding delivery expectations, customer support requirements, return rates, and retention patterns - all of which directly impact profitability. 

Brands that measure success through these lenses gain a clearer picture of where to optimise performance and where to invest for long term marketplace advantage. 

Conclusion: Where to Play and How to Win 

As global ecommerce evolves, marketplaces remain essential to customer reach and revenue growth. However, success depends on focus, strategy and operational precision. 

By evaluating your commerce needs against marketplace capabilities, investing in localisation and compliance, and building an agile operational model, your brand can expand internationally with confidence. 

The brands that win in 2026 will be those that scale with strategy, not just speed.