E-commerce & Online Marketplaces covers online retailers, marketplaces for goods, and platforms for rides and deliveries. MoatScope covers 47 companies here. Two have a wide moat, 15 a narrow moat and 30 none.
How the industry makes money
Platforms earn in several layers at once: margins on goods they stock and ship themselves, commissions and fulfillment fees from third-party sellers, subscriptions, and increasingly advertising sold to merchants who want to be seen. Amazon combines all of these with a cloud-computing business. MercadoLibre pairs its marketplace with payments and credit. Ride-hailing and delivery platforms such as Uber, DoorDash and Grab take a share of each trip or order.
Where the moats are
Network effects appear in 12 of the 17 moat-rated companies, because more buyers attract more sellers and the reverse. Cost advantages appear in 11: warehouses, delivery networks and purchasing scale let the largest platforms deliver faster and cheaper.
- Amazon: cost advantages in fulfillment and logistics, a marketplace network, and switching costs from its Prime subscription.
- MercadoLibre: the largest base of buyers and sellers in its markets and a developed payments business that keeps both on the platform.
The narrow-moat group includes PDD, Alibaba, JD.com, Sea, Coupang, eBay, Uber, DoorDash and Grab. Companies without a moat include Lyft, Jumia and Revolve, which face strong competitors or thin networks.
What wears moats down
Shoppers can compare prices in seconds, so platforms that stop offering better prices or faster delivery lose customers quickly. Logistics networks demand constant heavy investment, low-price rivals can win buyers with aggressive subsidies, and rules on gig workers and cross-border parcels can change the economics of whole business models.
What the quality scores say
Amazon scores 57 and MercadoLibre 61 on MoatScope's quality scale; PDD, rated narrow, scores 67. The industry average is 33.
What to watch
- Advertising and commission growth relative to order growth.
- Spending on warehouses and delivery networks.
- Regulation of gig work and cross-border shipping.
- Competition from low-price platforms.
Moat ratings and quality scores on this page update as companies report. Price versus fair value for every company in the industry is in the screener.