Xin Ou
Research expert covering Greater China
Online marketplaces - statistics & facts
When talking about e-commerce, it is almost natural for people to think of Amazon or eBay. Their reputation precedes them not only because they have forged the path of online retail sales for more than two decades, but for having maintained their leadership over time. As of 2025, however, there are several Chinese marketplaces, among others, that have disrupted the global market. Most notably, Temu and AliExpress have spread across the world at an unprecedented pace, topping global app download rankings and growing steeply in revenue. These companies all demonstrate how third-party online selling and dropshipping are gradually increasing their dominance in global e-commerce.
Online marketplace heavyweights
Contrary to online retailers and direct-to-consumer online stores, revenue is not the clearest indicator to measure an online marketplace’s performance. Due to the focus on third-party selling on a marketplace, gross merchandise value (GMV), i.e., the total value of goods sold, is best suited to indicate the level of activity occurring on a storefront such as Amazon or AliExpress. The global ranking of online marketplaces by GMV is topped by Amazon, with a gross merchandise value of nearly 800 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. Remarkably, Amazon is followed by five Chinese marketplaces that generate most of their GMV domestically. Pinduoduo, Douyin (the Chinese equivalent of TikTok), JD.com. and Alibaba-owned Taobao and Tmall all generated upwards of 500 billion U.S. dollars in 2024, far ahead of Western competitors such as Walmart and eBay.
A new dawn for traditional retailers?
In light of the growing reach of e-commerce, brick-and-mortar stores have also begun offering their e-retail platforms to third-party sellers. Walmart, for instance, launched its own online marketplace in 2009. After several years without much novelty, the bet started to pay off. Today, America’s largest retailer has become one of the world's leading e-retailers while maintaining its robust momentum for further growth.
Etsy: standing out in a crowded field
Faced with an increasingly competitive landscape, some e-commerce companies have opted for a different business model. Instead of offering everything for everyone, Etsy focuses on filling the niche of handmade and vintage items. This online C2C/B2C retail platform has built much of its success by providing customers with a more personalized shopping experience than mass merchandise sales. The number of active buyers on Etsy more than doubled from 2019 to 2021, and remained at around 95 million in 2024.
Temu's rapid rise and challenges in the global marketplace
A new player has inserted itself into the marketplace field. Temu, a direct competitor to Aliexpress and Shein, barged in with low prices and a wide range of products, gaining market share at a rapid pace. In 2024, just two years after its conception, Temu’s app was the most downloaded app worldwide. In 2025, Temu recorded over one billion monthly visits to its temu.com storefront - impressive numbers for a relatively new company. However, the brand’s popularity is not the only thing that has been rising. In recent years, Temu has been involved in several controversies, from the mishandling of personal client data to allegations of forced labor in the production process.
The online marketplace model works well everywhere. Large enterprises use their technological edge and distribution facilities to provide the most seamless online shopping experience available to both consumers and sellers. In this cross-border age where online marketplaces have truly gone global, Amazon is feeling the heat of its predominantly Chinese-based competitors, while consumer-to-consumer platforms like Etsy are threatening the market position of eBay.
