The Online Marketplace Advantage

5Make‐or‐Break Marketplace Best Practices at Launch and Beyond

The fundamental focus of our research, as we sift through data pouring from hundreds of customers, is simple: What do successful marketplaces have in common? What have they done right?

We've boiled this down to five best practices. Each one is vital for success – and at the same time all too easy to postpone, downplay, or ignore. After all, there's a daily temptation, one with lots of support throughout the company, to maintain the status quo and follow the usual routines. It's so much easier.

At the same time, these practices are challenging because they touch on how people think. It's much simpler to install a machine or even new enterprise software than to change how team members view the basic elements of their careers, including customers and competition. But for a marketplace to thrive, they must.

The five best practices to tackle energetically before the launch:

• Help people to think about customers much more broadly. Everyone you do business with, from sellers to shoppers, is a customer.
• Battle the myth of cannibalization. It can sink morale within an enterprise, undermining a new marketplace. And it's untrue.
• Don't shortchange yourself on change management. The effort and money you invest at the start will pay itself back many times over down the road.
• Don't confuse good curation with scarcity. Use automation to achieve curation at scale. Your marketplace can remain welcoming and intimate, while still offering ...