Facebook’s e-commerce push may seem like a gentle tap now as compared to the growing market of online and offline transactions created through platforms. Slowly but surely though they are expanding to other markets, at least with their Marketplace platform. They announced that they are expanding to Europe, specifically in 17 new markets. This makes a total of 24 countries where the buy and sell platform for local communities is now available after previously expanding to Australia, Canada, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand and the UK and initially launching in the US.
If you live in any of these European countries (Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland), you will now be able to buy and sell goods within your local communities through Facebook. Well, people have actually been doing this everywhere Facebook is available, but Marketplace puts a more organized and easier spin on this.
Facebook actually doesn’t charge anything to buyers and sellers and actual transactions actually happen offline and in cash. Most of the items sold on the platform are second-hand, making it a competitor of eBay rather than Amazon. They say you can post items for sale in less than 15 seconds from your smartphone or computer, well, if you have pictures and product information on hand.
While you can actually pick a radius for how far you would want to travel to pick up an item that you want to buy, the goal of Marketplace is for mostly local transactions. In fact, there are restrictions within national boundaries so as to avoid language confusion, as per Deborah Liu, vice president of Facebook Marketplace. “We want to make it easier to buy and sell, but we also want to make it community based,” she said.
SOURCE: Facebook
