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Selling on a Marketplace: The Difference Between Products and Offers

Every e-commerce marketplace website sells products, but they also have offers. Let’s explore the difference between the two.

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Simply put, a product is the physical item for sale. When a seller creates a product to sell on a marketplace website, they are asked to fill out the details about it that will not change. For example, to sell a pack of reusable warehouse gloves, a seller would be asked to provide product details such as: product number, UPC, package quantity, size, weight, color, material type, country of origin, and product description, to name just a few.

Product details help buyers determine whether the product they found on the site exactly matches the product they’re trying to procure.

After the seller’s product has been officially created by the marketplace operator within their internal systems and pushed to the website, the seller needs to add the sale conditions. These include but are not limited to: inventory quantity (how much the seller has of the product to sell to customers), price per unit, discount volume pricing, product condition (such as used, new, refurbished), special promotional dates, and whether the seller accepts returns. In the online marketplace space, the term sales condition has been replaced with “offer.”

In marketplace SaaS platforms, sellers will load up their products or services and then add their offers. They can change their offer details as often as they like, and they often will when there has been a change in inventory, promotional periods have ended, or they want to change the pricing.

Offers make the purchasing process complete by giving buyers the information they need to know whether they’re getting an appropriate or good deal on the product.

Some B2B marketplaces allow multiple offers on a product, meaning that several sellers who carry the same product can offer to sell it on the site with their own sale conditions. The customer can browse those offers and choose one.

Have more questions? Get in touch with a MarketPush expert to see a marketplace in action or discuss how to help your company embrace the future of e-commerce. Email us at sales@marketpush.com.