There are two distinct parts of Amazon working as one entity: Amazon.com and Amazon Marketplace that not many people notice while shopping. Amazon Retail and Amazon Marketplace as a manufacturer, wholesaler, distributor, brand or retailer, are two channels to get one’s products exposed to Amazon’s 310 million active customers worldwide.
Amazon vs Amazon Marketplace
The main difference between amazon and amazon marketplace is that amazon is basically a customer-oriented e-commerce platform that enables customers to buy products of huge varieties whereas amazon marketplace is a seller oriented platform that facilitates anyone to sell directly to the end-user or online customer. Amazon takes a referral fee from each sale that they make.
Speaking of amazon.com, is a major website that sells everything from lipsticks to furniture from electronic goods to household materials. When we are shopping from Amazon.com, we are buying directly from Amazon’s complete product inventory and individual sellers.
Amazon Marketplace as against amazon.com is the third-party retailer market integrated into the same platform. It offers its customers a much wider product choice from numbers of external sellers and enables price comparison to keep the platform competitive. Amazon Marketplace is so well integrated into Amazon.com, a lot of customers don’t even realize they are purchasing from third-party sellers.
Comparison Table between Amazon and Amazon Marketplace
| Parameters of Comparison | Amazon | Amazon Marketplace |
| Overview | It is a major website or e-commerce platform that sells everything to its customers. | It is the third-party retailer market that offers its customers a much wider product choice from numbers of external sellers and enables price comparison to keep the platform competitive. |
| Service | It does not allow | It allows sellers to resell used and new items. |
| Connection | Amazon is an independent company. | Amazon Marketplace is an integrated section of amazon. |
| Charges | There are no such charges in Amazon. | It charges a specific sum as a fee from its seller. |
| Branding | Goods which are bought directly from Amazon.com are amazon’s own branded products. | In the Amazon Marketplace, all kinds of products are sold. |
What is Amazon?
Amazon.com is the world’s largest online retail platform and a prominent cloud services provider. In 1994, Jeff Bezos established amazon as a book seller platform. The said organization went public in may 1996. By the time, the company expanded to sell a wide variety of consumer goods, digital media and its own electronic devices, such as the Kindle Fire tablet, Kindle e-book reader and Fire TV, a streaming media adapter.
The headquarter of amazon is located in Seattle, Washington and united states. The company provides services such as customer service centers, software development centers, individual websites and fulfillment centers all around the world.
It is a technically operated multinational company that focuses on digital streaming, e-commerce, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. It is one of the big five companies in the U.S. information technology industry, along with Microsoft, Google, Apple and Facebook.
Amazon has a display store website for over a dozen different countries and its ship to nearly every country in the world. It also hosts the retail websites of several brands such as Marks & Spencer, Sears Canada, Lacoste, and many others. It even owns over 40 different subsidiary brands such as Diapers.com, Goodreads, Zappos, IMDb, etc.
What is Amazon Marketplace?
Speaking of Amazon Marketplace, it is an e-commerce platform owned and operated by Amazon. It enables third-party sellers to sell used or new products on a fixed-price with the help online marketplace alongside Amazon’s regular offerings. Using the Amazon marketplace, third-party sellers get the facility to display their goods on its site without having to invest in additional inventory and gain access to Amazon’s customer base.
Items purchased from third-party sellers on amazon are either fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) or fulfilled by the merchant (FBM). FBM goods are kept with the third-party seller in their inventory, and shipping and customer service are handled by the third-party merchant itself. On the other hand, FBA goods are stored in Amazon’s fulfillment centers, and shipping and customer service are handled by Amazon. These third-party merchants are charged a referral fee for each sale which is a percentage of the sales price.
The profit made by the third party seller of Amazon is shared by both the company itself and the parties involved in selling goods via amazon. The third party seller takes on merchandising responsibilities and manages their prices. Many suppliers use the Marketplace to introduce new products with greater control over prices. It is also referred to as a good way to sell slow-moving items, such as last year models or accessories.
There are four steps involved in the working of the amazon marketplace:
- Create an account on Amazon Seller Central.
- Add your product sheets to Amazon’s marketplace..
- Manage your orders
- Dispatch your orders.
Main Differences Between Amazon and Amazon Marketplace
- Amazon is a massive online retail and cloud service provider, as against, Amazon marketplace is a third party retail market integrated into amazon itself.
- Amazon is a customer service provider that offers its clients a large variety of goods from all across the world. On the other hand, Amazon Marketplace is a seller service provider that offers small individuals or groups of individuals/ businesses to display and sell their product at a fixed rate on an online platform.
- Amazon employed Amazon Web Services (AWS), Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3) to go on with the process. Amazon marketplace uses fulfilled by the merchant (FBM) or fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) to work on.
- Amazon marketplace is a platform that charges its seller a certain amount of fee on every sale they make but there is no such criteria in amazon as there is no individual seller involved.
- Amazon sells all those products which are solely branded by itself and amazon marketplace offers a wider range of brands from all around the world using its retail techniques.
- Amazon does not allow sellers to resell used and new items, whereas Amazon marketplace does.
Conclusion
Although the names may create some confusion, there are suitable differences between the website Amazon Marketplace and Amazon itself. Amazon the website itself is an online sales site similar to the major retailers we shop from on a daily basis, like Wal-Mart. Marketplace has a larger variety of items to purchase as it offers thousands of sellers to offer their product for sale.
References
- http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.368.5065
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019850113002150
- https://academic.oup.com/jeclap/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jeclap/lpz061/5610029
- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3606055