Over these years, eCommerce businesses have made a tremendous progress. It is certainly now an Industry of its own and many Entrepreneurs and Investors are now looking at pitching into this as they see the usage of it from a large set of audience and expect a good turnover.
So, eCommerce creates needs for professionalizing it and making it niche. So, in order to face the competition in the Industry, now the eCommerce businesses have to decide on their business model and function accordingly.
What is these eCommerce business models?
Yes, certainly we are aware of B2C and B2B. However, with emerging number of both these marketplaces, further in parallel, one has to think, if it is going to be a Horizontal Marketplace or Vertical Marketplace? Now, what are these. Let us talk about each one of them now.
Horizontal Marketplace
This is certainly not new to us, except for the terminology. Horizontal Marketplace is any eCommerce platform that almost sells every product under the sun. Let’s take Amazon or Flip Kart as the best examples. Amazon started from online book selling. Today, they are selling products of all categories with totally unbelievable range of products. You think of buying something and you surely happen to find it on Amazon. This is amazing, isn’t it?
This is what makes horizontal eCommerce business model popular among Consumers. It brings a wide range of market segments together, thus achieving a greater coverage. But such diversified business model does have its own loop holes. If the business is trying to cover every market segment, they tend to lose on the nicheness, thus losing out on all the opportunities to dominate in a specific market segment, targeting a specific audience. This is where vertical eCommerce Marketplace takes its stand.
Vertical Marketplace
On the other hand, Vertical Marketplace specializes in offering goods and services specific to an industry, trade, profession, or other group of customers with specialized needs. Today, vertical marketplaces are gaining more popularity and here are the reasons:
Well-defined Target Audience: They very well know about their target audience and thus, it gives them an advantage of knowing their Customers very well. Analysing their buying behaviour and having a clear picture on the functionality within the eCommerce portal becomes much easier for them. For example, Airbnb, very well understands their Customer needs and offers an online marketplace with customer friendly and budgeted accommodation.
Addresses Customer Pain Points: As they cater to niche audience, they will tend to focus more on Customer pain points. While Horizontal marketplace focuses on having every other product on its portal, Vertical Marketplaces tend to introduce products that rightly addresses Customer needs. Another best example is Staymarta, a platform similar to Airbnb, but for Christian-friendly accommodation, found great success as a hyper-vertical marketplace, targeting the market that looked for something specific. So, Vertical Marketplaces offer a solution, instead of selling a product. Henceforth, they are gaining more popularity when compared to the Horizontal marketplaces.
How Spurtcommerce is a suitable solution for both
While Spurtcommerce has solution to create unlimited product categories, with the scalable ability for upload of unlimited products, supporting horizontal marketplaces in the best manner, the solution can also cater to vertical marketplaces with limited number of categories and products. too.
A complete freedom to have any number of categories and having any number of products, Spurtcommerce is becoming a popular solution for developing online marketplaces as per any needs and requirement – both Horizontal and Vertical.
With Spurtcommerce, a B2B Online Marketplace, catering to a large audience has been developed. At the same time, a B2C online marketplace with limited categories and products in the fashion sector also has been developed.
So, what is your eCommerce requirement? Spurtcommerce does has the right solution to address your requirement. For more information, visit https://www.spurtcommerce.com/