From Margins to Mainstream: The Rise of Marketplaces in Australia with Mark Mansour - Managing Director, Woolworths MarketPlus

Transcript

Our transcripts are generated by AI. Please excuse any typos and if you have any specific questions please email info@digitalshelfinstitute.org.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (00:00):

Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf APAC Edition, where we explore the unique challenges and opportunities shaping digital commerce across Asia Pacific with insights from the region's top experts.

 

(00:25):

Hello, and welcome back to Unpacking the Digital Shelf, the APAC Edition. Today, we're exploring one of the most significant structural shifts in Australian retail over the past decade. Marketplaces have been around longer than many people realize. eBay launched in Australia back in 1999, but for a long while, marketplaces sat at the edges of retail in Australia, but that has dramatically changed. Over the past five to seven years, marketplaces have moved from the margins to the mainstream down under. Amazon entered in 2019. Homegrown players emerged, some thrived, some didn't. And then there's the unstoppable rise of Sheen and Timu, which have rewritten the rules on price, speed, and scale. But retailers have also gotten in on the act. Our inside digital and e-commerce 2026 study found that nearly one in three Australian retailers now operate a marketplace, a stat that even shocked me. Here with me today is one of Australia's leading experts in the marketplace sphere.

 

(01:30):

Mark Mansour is currently managing director of Woolworths Market Plus, leading platform growth across Woolworths, Big W, and everyday rewards. Before this, he was a founding team member at Cartology, and he has held senior commercial roles at eBay Australia, PayPal, MasterCard, and Optus, giving him a perspective on marketplaces that spans both sides of the platform equation. Mark, welcome to the podcast. So great to have you join us to unpack the marketplace landscape and what it means for brands operating in the local market.

 

Mark Mansour (02:07):

Thanks for having me today, Teresa.

 

Teresa Sperti (02:09):

I'm really, really looking forward to this discussion. All right, so let's start by unpacking the landscape. I really want to hear your thoughts and perspectives on what's happening locally, what's happening globally. And even when we got together to plan this, some of the stats that you shared with me really surprised me. So how about you start with giving us a little bit of context?

 

Mark Mansour (02:32):

Yeah, so the way that I'd characterize the landscape locally and globally is that competition is intensifying and the global players are not standing still, they're scaling. You mentioned Shien and Timu, and my view is that they've really reset customer expectation on price and speed that pulls everyone along. And so marketplaces keep on taking a bigger slice of online sales. And I think Australia sits at around a quarter of online today versus I think around 70% in the US and even higher in other parts of Asia. So I think we're lagging behind that global benchmark, but here's the insight that I'd add because it reframes the gap. I did read the Arctic Fox study and that was, you mentioned in your intro, one in three Australian retailers are now operating a marketplace. So the capability is being built faster than penetration showing up in the numbers.

 

(03:34):

And the gap between 25% and 70% isn't the ceiling, it's effectively the runway. And the reasons why we've lagged are structural. It's not a lack of appetite. And so we're a smaller, more concentrated retail market. The tyranny of geography and logistics, we've started later than the US, but all of those factors are softening. And my read is Australia is set up to converge quickly and not stay behind.

 

Teresa Sperti (04:06):

Really interesting. I think the 25% stat was the one that really surprised me. Whilst there's a lot of discussion around Amazon and its share of total e-commerce sales in Australia, when you mentioned to me that 25% of total sales are now from an online perspective are now coming from marketplaces, that made me stand up and really take notice because that's not a stat that we talk about often in our local market. And you're right, there is quite a substantial gap between where we're at locally and what we see in other markets. But where do you think that that's headed over the next two to three years? Is it conceivable that marketplaces might represent 30 to 40 or even 50% of total e-commerce sales in Australia?

 

Mark Mansour (04:56):

I mean, my view is I do think marketplace has become the default retail operating model. And I think your stat around one in three retailers launching marketplaces. I think that will continue to scale. And I think the distinction between 1P and 3P continues to blur. And retailers evolve from being merchants to platforms. One of probably the best examples of that happening is in the US where I was speaking to a large-scaled retailer and they consider themselves now a marketplace and their largest seller on that marketplace is their own 1P inventory.

 

Teresa Sperti (05:42):

Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? And the mindset shift that goes with that for a retailer to say we are a marketplace, not a retailer, when they've probably been trading as a retailer for decades, that's quite a significant leap, which represents a maturity in that market.

 

Mark Mansour (05:59):

It does represent a maturity in that market. And I do think 25% penetration isn't the ceiling. I think that it continues to grow over the next three to five years and players will emerge that may be new players. But I think in my view, the retail marketplace model is one that scales for many, many reasons, which I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit later.

 

Teresa Sperti (06:30):

Fantastic. Really, really interesting. So we're seeing more and more brands locally leveraging Amazon in an array of categories, but I'm interested to unpack what's driving retailers to launch their own marketplaces beyond the obvious, and why should brands care?

 

Mark Mansour (06:48):

Well, look, at its core, it's about serving the customer better. A marketplace lets a retailer offer a range that it couldn't hold itself. Effectively that endless aisle, we hear that term thrown around quite a bit. And that really primarily is to give customers more reasons to keep shopping with the brand that they already trust. And so the other part of that, it's capital light. You extend the range without working capital drag of buying inventory, storing it, fulfilling it. The seller carries it, the retailer earns on the transaction without the balance sheet risk. And then there's the people part. The flywheel, more range serves more customer missions, which brings more customers and more transactions, which generates richer data, which powers retail media personalization,

 

(07:36):

Which funds sharper offers that bring more customers again. It's quite virtuous. That's why I say marketplaces are becoming infrastructure. It's not a side channel. It sits underneath the entire model. And your question about why brands care, I've thought about that a lot since we spoke last. I think really it's about incremental access to customers who are already in a shopping mindset at the moment of intent. Often against first party and loyalty data, you simply can't buy on the open web. If you think about it, a brand should be where the vectors of opportunity are. And if you're not playing where there's a secondary market or customer transaction in the categories you play in, you're missing out. It's all about that digital shelf. It's having a presence in the right platforms that are accretive to that customer mission.

 

Teresa Sperti (08:35):

That ability to gain that incremental reach and potentially bring new to brand shoppers that you might not naturally reach through your core go-to-market channels. Absolutely agree. And there are categories like fashion, like luxury goods where Amazon just isn't the right environment for brands. And retail marketplaces, my belief is that they open up a new avenue for brands operating within those categories and possibly others that you would have more visibility to. Do you agree with that?

 

Mark Mansour (09:14):

Look, I think my view may be a bit contrarian to that. I think if you're a scaled platform that has a relationship with customers that's built on trust, I think you have more of a right to be able to extend into categories that may be in the periphery of your core proposition.

 

(09:36):

And so if you think about the premise of a marketplace, it's effectively there to serve infinite customer missions. There are some marketplaces that have existed in Australia that have maybe gone too broad, and then there are others that have more of a right to play where you can open up more categories that may not be that primary mission, but because you've got the relationship with the customer, it feels contextual. They trust the brand that they're transacting with, and they're being surprised and delighted by being able to find products and categories that don't ordinarily sit with that retail brand.

 

Teresa Sperti (10:22):

Yeah. Interesting. So our study found that nearly half of all brands are managing five or more e-commerce channels already, and nearly one in 10 are managing 10 plus. So there's a lot of channels that brands are already trying to activate and contend with. So when it comes to marketplaces specifically, where should brands play? How do they win? How do they make those decisions around which marketplaces to partner with and which ones to potentially not? Because again, they're already contending with so many channels.

 

Mark Mansour (11:00):

Yeah, look, I think you can't be everywhere and do it well, is just the overarching perspective that I have. So it's a matter of prioritization before it's an execution problem. I'd say professional marketplace sellers have a very open aperture in terms of where they trade. Whereas for specific brands, I think you need to be a little bit more discerning. And so I'd screen platforms on four things. First, it's mission fit. Does the marketplace's customer and shopping mission actually match your category? Do they have a right to play to extending things that are not necessarily in that primary mission? I'd say the second one would be economics. Once you net out take rate, fulfillment, returns, the ad spend, you'll need to be visible. Do the unit economics still work? I think the third would be right to win. Can you differentiate here? Or are you one of 50 undifferentiated sellers fighting on price?

 

(12:09):

And the last one would be strategic value beyond sales. Sometimes you are there for the data or the customer acquisition, not just the margin on the unit. And so I know examples of brands say in the food category that love to trade on a grocery marketplace because it's so adjacent and it gives credibility to their brand, even though it's only an online only. It's also not just about sales and transaction, it's about being in the game where the category sits and playing to win. And so there is a lot of choice in marketplaces. Retailers have thousands to tens of thousands of SKUs, and on a marketplace there are millions and millions of skews. And so you need to stand out and stay reliable. And so winning, it's the fundamentals of that digital shelf. It's like content, it's imagery, it's reviews, it's availability, it's post-transaction service, and all of this makes a difference in your ability to scale and yield the benefit of trading on a marketplace.

 

(13:23):

I

 

Teresa Sperti (13:23):

Love some of that assessment criteria and that need to. I think that the piece around the due diligence, who are you going to be competing against on that platform and your ability to differentiate and stand out, I think is critical, as opposed to just looking at scale and reach. I think that's a really interesting additional layer. And beyond some of the more, I'd say, hygiene factors that you look at in order to determine if it's the right marketplace for you. And I think the other thing that you've just touched on that's really interesting that's worth reinforcing is this piece around unit economics and the ability to drive return from a single transaction. My perspective, similar to what you've been saying, is that at times playing with a respective marketplace or activating within a respective marketplace, that play might be about new to brand. It might be about discovery of your brand in environments where traditionally you haven't been able to reach certain segments of customers.

 

(14:34):

And therefore, if you solely look at the cost to list on the platform and sell, and did I make a return on that single sale, you might be missing a much bigger opportunity as a brand. Being really clear on that, what is that role that the marketplace plays within my broader strategy is really critical for brands to be thinking about.

 

Mark Mansour (14:59):

Yeah, I think that's the right view to have. At its core, I think if you're a brand, you've got to be where the customers are. And increasingly, if we look abroad, the customers are in marketplaces. And so it's not too late for a brand today that doesn't have a clear marketplace strategy to develop one. We're at 25% penetration of online. If we look at other markets we spoke before, it's at 50, 60, 70%. And so being really clear on the marketplaces that you want to test and learn on, running an experiment, seeing how the profile of the customer, whether it be geo, regional, metro, whatnot, basket size, the products that they're buying, it's going to be different than your own platform. And each marketplace, the customer's going to be different as well.

 

Teresa Sperti (15:55):

That's right.

 

Mark Mansour (15:55):

And so having that in mind as you develop your marketplace strategy, I think is really, really critical.

 

Teresa Sperti (16:04):

Fantastic. I think there's a whole lot in there for brands to be thinking about, which is fantastic. So when it comes to retailer marketplaces, the partnership model might look a little bit different to your traditional partnerships that you have with a retailer. What does a strong brand marketplace partnership look like in the retailer marketplace model? What does it look like in practice? Well,

 

Mark Mansour (16:35):

I think my response is going to be generic across marketplaces. So you've got destination marketplaces and you've got retailer marketplaces. And so I'd say what a strong partnership looks like, and this is based on my time, not just at Woolworths, but at eBay. I think there's a difference between being a seller and a partner. And so a seller is someone that uploads a catalog and waits. A partner actually trades the platform. And so a successful partnership is one where you are actively trading the platform. It's not set and forget. And so I think a strong partnership has three core elements. The first one is you need aligned commercial goals and joint ambitions where we agree on what we're trying to deliver together. We have a plan to get there. It's not just a contract. It's not just a clip of the ticket. The second is openness and flexibility to trade.

 

(17:34):

So rather than that set and forget, you are actually trading the channel and the best brands tailor their proposition to the retailer's opportunity. And one example that I have is Samsung's a really good live example. They actively trade marketplaces I've been involved in with unique offers or products built for the audience rather than a generic listing. They will run special deals on different marketplaces that you can't find in other areas. And that actually drives velocity and sales volume for them. And it makes you want to partner with them because they're bringing diversity in terms of the offering for customers. Absolutely. And then I'd say the third one is really it's a willingness to tell their story. So using the platform's retail media or platform tools to differentiate that brand's proposition and why customers should choose that product versus just appearing in search.

 

Teresa Sperti (18:36):

And what all of this is reinforcing is it's not set and forget. It's not load and see what happens. It's retail marketplaces or destination marketplaces. They want to see the sales growth. And to deliver that sales growth, you need to be investing heavily to drive the outcomes on those platforms. That's going to reinforce that you're a key player or partner with that marketplace is what I'm hearing.

 

Mark Mansour (19:09):

Absolutely.

 

Teresa Sperti (19:11):

So I want to switch gears a little bit. I want to talk about agentic commerce. Obviously you can't have a podcast episode these days that doesn't touch on agentic commerce, but in the context of marketplaces, where is it all heading? What role does agentic commerce play in the future of marketplaces? What do you see globally? What do you see locally? And what are you thinking about even in your role?

 

Mark Mansour (19:35):

I mean, this is something that I think about a lot and I've got very strong opinions on. My view is that marketplaces and retail marketplaces specifically, they become more prolific because they can serve more customer missions. So breadth of supply lets one destination answer more of what a customer needs. And data is the enabler underneath all of that. So the richer the data, the more missions you can serve well, and the more defensible the position becomes. So data's the moat, not range on its own. And here's my actual view on where it goes. Shopping's splitting into two. There's experiential shopping where the customer wants to browse, discover, be expired, and there's utility shopping, which is replenishment, need it done, where the customer just wants the outcome. And agentic utility-orientated customers will hand discovery, comparison, and eventually transaction authority to an LLM acting as their proxy.

 

(20:39):

And when the agent becomes the buyer, the platforms that win are the ones with breadth and the rich, trusted machine readable data to be selected by the agent. So the way that I'd frame the future, the interface is shifting from the storefront to the agent. And retailers increasingly need to be ready to sell to agents, not just shoppers. And brands need to ask a new question, not just can a human find and rank my product, but can AI discover it, trust it, and choose it? And I think about timing, I think it's not imminent, but I think it is in that next horizon over the next two to three years. Agentic and empowering systems and machines to act on our behalf will become a much more prolific part of that shopping experience, whether it's discovery or transacting or automating things on my behalf. And I think the brands that have breadth of selection are the ones that are going to be playing to win.

 

Teresa Sperti (21:47):

Interesting. We've been thinking about it a lot as well. And similar to you, we think about it in how much can the shopper delegate? And there's categories where there's high levels of ability to delegate and low levels of ability to delegate, which aligns with exactly what you're talking about. Those utility replenishment type categories are the ones that are best placed to be able to delegate most of, if not all of the shopping journey over to the agent to do on my behalf. There are other categories obviously that require far more, they're far more emotive, far more personal to me as an individual, like travel and those types of things where I want to have a bit of a bigger say around the decisions that it's making on my behalf. So really interesting perspectives and aligns with a lot of what we're thinking and seeing in market.

 

(22:43):

I don't know if this is a bit of a controversial question, but if you look at where Google's going with its universal cart, does it become a marketplace? It has access to all of the inventory and the ability for people to check out and pay. Does it in its own right become a marketplace? Do you have any thoughts there?

 

Mark Mansour (23:06):

Look, I think it's an interesting innovation and it is part of a much bigger trend. And that is that shopping's becoming increasingly more fragmented. And we see it today, customers don't always start their mission on a retailer's website.

 

(23:27):

And so Google has been the platform for discovery and comparison. And so is checkout within the realm of reality? I think it comes down to does it deliver utility for customers that want to choose that platform to meet their shopping needs? I think increasingly it becomes more important to. Proximity to customers become a much more important lever in the future of commerce. And I think retailers with strong ecosystems, loyalty, first-party data will always have significant advantages. And then you think about, I know today we're talking about the digital shelf, that illuminated in-store experience becomes even more important. Important.

 

Teresa Sperti (24:23):

Yeah.

 

Mark Mansour (24:23):

It becomes even more important. And it's not to say that Agentic doesn't bleed into and leveraging LLMs to improve that in-store experience, but digital and in-store coming together I think becomes a powerful tool in terms of communicating proposition and ensuring customers continue coming to retail platforms to serve more of their missions.

 

Teresa Sperti (24:47):

I agree. The brand promise and the positioning and driving preference becomes more important than ever in this world because not everything is about fast and convenient. Not everything is. And again, it's dependent on category. I fundamentally agree.

 

Mark Mansour (25:03):

Final thought on that is the battle isn't for the card, it's who orchestrates that customer journey.

 

Teresa Sperti (25:09):

Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. All right, so we've covered so many topics already. Before I let you go, Mark, for brands yet to take the leap into marketplaces, we've covered off the fact it's already 25% of total online sales in Australia. It's something brands need to be thinking about where to play and how to win. Any last pieces of advice based on your wealth of experience?

 

Mark Mansour (25:36):

I think for brands, you don't have to be everywhere, but you can't afford to be nowhere. And so pick your platforms, commit properly, treat it as a business you run, not just a listing. The brands that win on marketplaces in three years are the ones that are building the muscle now because that capability compounds and accelerates. And if I had to leave them with one line, I'd say stop thinking of the marketplace as a channel you bolt on. It's becoming the infrastructure of retail and get in, get learning, get good at it, because the gap to the leaders only widens from

 

Teresa Sperti (26:15):

Here. I love that. And I think I hear a lot in market from brands that I work with or brands that I'm just generally talking to in industry. Sometimes the volume doesn't warrant me to play in the marketplace space. And my response to that consistently is, well, what do you gain through the learning and the build of capability based on where the market is going? Because you can't turn that capability on in a quarter when you finally want to start leveraging marketplaces because the tipping point in your category has come. You want to be ahead of that tipping point. And so I really like that advice. It's not just about being there, it's about really building those muscles and skills to be able to derive the value for your brand, which I think is incredibly important. Well, thank you, Mark. Thank you so much for being our guest today and demystifying the world of marketplaces.

 

(27:18):

I've really enjoyed having you on the podcast.

 

Mark Mansour (27:22):

Thanks so much for having

 

Teresa Sperti (27:24):

Me. And thanks as always to our listeners for tuning into Unpacking the Digital Shelf, the APAC Edition with me, Theresa Sperdi.