The Online Market – What You Need to Know 

Welcome to another worldbestaffiliate.com’s article. This article is about the online market. The objective of this article is to present the unique and significant properties of the online market. We’ll compare these in contrast of properties of traditional offline markets. We’ll also see how the online market interacts with the consumers. And about what power the consumers now have at their disposal, and how marketers should approach the consumers through digital media.

With the fast expanding digital shopping, the online market has opened a vast opportunity for small businesses, including affiliate marketers. Finally, there are tips on how to seize this opportunity in affiliate marketing, as also on where to learn about affiliate marketing and the marketing knowledge in general.

I hope this article is useful for the readers. Here are the significant points in this article:

What is in this article:

- Online market definition

- Market competition in the mind of consumers

- Comparing offline market and the online market unique properties 

- Online market practicality

Evolution from passive buyer to involved buyer

- Access dynamics (shop > pc>laptop>phone)

- Easier payment method (from cash to credit cards to superapp /financial technology.)

- Market size and global geographical coverage

- Easier overall access and plenty of resources

- How to seize online marketing opportunity

• Start now!
• Learn fundamentals of marketing
• A good tutorial /course might be necessary
• Prepare to learn continuously

- Conclusion

Note: this article contains affiliate marketing links.

Online market definition

A market is a place that connects sellers and buyers. It is where transactions occur. In marketing term, it is the place where an exchange of customer value and seller offer (value preposition) happens.

The online market is a type of market where interactions between sellers and buyers occur on digital devices of equipment. It shares some properties with offline market, but also has some distinctive characters unique to its online status. There are differences between online marketing and traditional marketing. We'll see it further later in this article. 

Market competition in the minds of consumers

The market is also the place where marketed products are pitted against each other. This competition needs a place to show the offers to the consumers. Traditional offline (brick-and-mortar store) market might put their products on shop windows for display consumers. Online market display their products on a shopping website which is viewed on a consumer’s device screen.

But where does the market competition actually happens? The actual market competition is the in the consumer’s mind. The customer’s mind is what a marketer must penetrate into and where the products and services must demonstrate their might. This is what marketing must do, making the products and sellers stick on the mind of the customers.

Visiting offline market and the online market unique properties

Comparing offline market and the online market properties

Both markets have the same basic aspects. They provide a place for pre-purchase interaction), transaction, and after sales communication and service. Due to the different environment, all these aspects have unique properties for each market.

Some aspects of both markets, when compared are as follows:

Practicality of the online market

The online market has significant advantage on practicality for consumers. The possibility to see and select products, and complete the transactions without spending time for transportation is really a big plus for today’s busy customers.

Seller’s wise, the possibility to set up a store with less physical preparation is also a big advantage, which allows small businesses (including affiliate marketers) to run a business.

To market the same product, these consideration factors will differ when the product is planned to be sold at offline or online market.

The online market provides a really big change to the place factor. Because no physical display is required for online market, the product can reach any customer at any place as long as the customer has access to the product's digital presentation. The customers do not need to travel to a store to get explanation about the product and make purchases.

This also means a huge increase in convenience for the customers, the main factor in current day shopping.

Evolution from passive to involved buyer

The online market also makes it possible for the customers to get better experience and involvement with their favorite shops or product manufacturers. This occurs through close, direct, immediate interaction, another benefit of the online market.

The Internet has made a much shorter line between a buyer, shop, manufacturer, even the designer of product to interact with. Customers can post questions and complaints, give reviews, suggest ideas, and express their opinions about a product or service.

They can also share their experience, from knowing, owning, using, and satisfaction with the product. And better yet, these can be done using video. The consumer experience has become more lively due to the online market. The customers are now playing active roles in the hype of the products in the market.

The noise of the cheers and delight of the “product joy” on the stage created by the customers themselves then contribute to even more sales. This is another contribution factor why the online market is a huge opportunity: the music of the party is much louder in the ears of the customers.

Access dynamics

Evolution of cellular devices and improved internet coverage and speed have also changed consumer access to online markets. The ease and convenience of shopping, making purchases, and getting involved in total consumer experience have gone far from requiring a PC or laptop to needing only phones.

Phone’s capability for internet interaction is increasing significantly while its price is becoming more affordable. Research found that online market access is now mostly made through phones instead of computers.

Thus when designing the marketing mix, a seller must take into account that the customers most possibly will use their phones. This means a digital interaction must be considered mainly for phone. And the use of phones will also allow the producers or sellers to collect consumer data and build a much better consumer profile.

Easier Payment Method

The way customers make payment has also evolved. Credit and debit cards were the among the first method for online payment. Then came online payment accounts such as Paypal, Payoneer, Skrill.

Today customers can make payment very easily with financial accounts on apps, which only require phones to register, so payments can be made now from virtually anywhere, only the phone is needed.

The financial technology has also allowed various types of payment instruments, such as pay later scheme, and also allows financing facilities provided by many small size companies, not only by large financial institutions such as banks.

The so called fintech has emerged so vast, thanks to changes in financial regulations in many countries.

This convenience in payment leads to significant increase in online purchases. The consumers are tending toward online shopping. As consumers’ demand for convenience increases continuously,  it opens a wide opportunity for online marketers to get transactions from customers more easily. So when selling online, a seller must consider payment convenience availability as a significant factor.

Market size and global geographical coverage

There are now 8 (eight) billion people on earth. Since creation of world wide web in 1989, in 2016 three-quarters of US population were online. Some other countries were even higher, such as Spain and Singapore (81%), South Korea and Japan (93%) (ourworldindata.com).

According to markinblog.com, in 2021, retail e-commerce sales amounted to approximately 4.9 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide. Mobile e-commerce sales reached $3.56 trillion in 2021, an increase of 15.2% over the previous year. In 2021, there were 2.14 billion digital buyers. That makes 27.6% of the 7.74 billion people in the world.

As of 2022, Amazon and eBay are still the most visited online marketplaces, as cited by statista.com. However, the leading online marketplace worldwide in 2021, by gross merchandise value (GMV) was held by Taobao, the Chinese online shopping platform. Its GMV  topped at about 711 billion US dollars.

Amazon gross merchandise value (GMV) in 2021 alone was estimated to about 610 billion US dollars. About two-thirds (390 billion dollars) was contributed by products sold through Amazon’s third party sellers, while 220 billion from Amazon as the retailer (statista.com). Amazon recorded 5.3 billion visits on July 2022.

For people who want to sell on Amazon, there are many ways to do it. They can  use 1P (first-party) method or 3P (third party) using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) or Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM). More details about selling on amazon can be found on their seller instruction page.

Globally, mobile internet service access also increases steadily, In 2020, four billion people were connected. The age group with highest number of internet users is 25-34 years old, a very productive age.

The highest retail e-commerce sales CAGR (compound annual growth rate) from 2022 to 2025 is held by Brazil at 20.73%. The United States is still growing at 14.55%.

And to top it off, e-retail sales surpassed 5.2 trillion US dollars worldwide in 2021 (statista.com). It is forecast to grow by 56%, reaching 8.1 trillion dollars in 2026. This growth clearly shows a big opportunity to enter the online market.

These data show the magnitude of opportunity to thrive in the online market. There are many ways to make income from the online market. In an article, forbes.com describes 17 ways to make money online.

How to seize the online market opportunity

Start now!

............

In short, that’s it. The opportunity is there to grab. Do a search on information on how to take advantage in the online market. For those interested in affiliate marketing, there are affiliate marketing courses available online, such as wealthyaffiliate.com.

For more information on marketing in general, you can read other articles in this website. They will give you an outlook on marketing, leading toward affiliate business.

Website or domain hosting are available from hosting providers. Many providers also include guidance to build websites, such as hostgator.

More about the basics of affiliate marketing, required tools and knowledge will be discussed in another article.

Easier overall access and plenty of resources

We can easily notice that it is much easier and quicker to shop online these days (thanks mostly to phones). While unseen by most people, many changes have also happened on seller’s side. The aforementioned events and changes, and progress in hardware and software have made it much easier for anybody to start an online business.

During the early days of the internet, creating an online business is really cumbersome. One needs to know how to write codes. Most selling must be done on seller’s own stores. Payment platforms were not easy to access by small businesses. Website creation was expensive and needs a lot of work. Internet coverage and interaction with targeted market was not as smooth and easy.

How to seize online marketing opportunity

1. Start immediately

Thus when a person intends to take the opportunity in the online market, what should he do? Like other new ventures, the first is setting a strong will to learn and take all necessary actions, right away. It takes time to learn and gain experience. There is no shortcut to it. And once the learning starts, it should not be carried on continuously as the market may change as the learning runs.

2. Learn fundamentals of marketing

Whatever business that goes, it must sell something. Before making sales, its products must be marketed, which is to be known by the targeted consumers or users and be planted in their mind (always remember that the market resides in customer’s mind). So it is necessary to know the fundamentals of marketing. There are good books about marketing basics, such as the Principles of Marketing by Kottler. I highly recommend this as a start.

There are also many places we can learn marketing fundamentals. We just must beware that the sources are reliable, since the social media contains a lot of low quality, irresponsible information posing as good resources.

3. A good tutorial /course might be necessary

Taking a good course or tutorial can make it even better to learn about online business. For those interested in affiliate marketing, Wealthy Affiliate can be a good place to start. More about Wealthy Affiliate will be discussed in another article.

4. Prepare for continuous learning

Along the way, we will find bits and pieces we must master to create an online business. The requirements may show up at stages of learning. An example is knowing about SEO (search engine optimization), which is how to optimize web pages to be easily found by visitors. This is another subject to learn.

Aside from technical website matters, we must also learn how a specific market behaves and changes over time. By building an instinct on how a market will change, a marketer can set an optimized plan to reduce inefficiency or loss and take precautions for better profits.

An example is when the Covid-19 pandemic hit where people don’t travel much. Sales of travel related products would plummet, while the demand for home delivery services, preventive health care, internet service and devices increased significantly.

Conclusion

The digital market has opened a big opportunity for many people to create their own online business. With its unique properties, there is a vast market available for an affiliate marketer. The market size is huge, while the progress in technology has also made it easier to allow transactions to occur.

However, the online market playground requires some learning to build a profitable business. Again thanks to technology, many tools and courses are easily within reach.

Anyone willing to seize the opportunity should start immediately, since there will be lots to learn along the way. Registering in a good course or community is advisable for directed improvement. 

If you have decided to start one, good luck with your journey.

I am always open for comment of suggestion. Just leave one below if you have any questions or comment.