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

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.

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 realise.

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 eCommerce 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.

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.

Thanks for having me today, Teresa.

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?