International overtake
Amazon.se launched in Sweden at the end of 2020. This marks the first time the international retail giant entered the Nordic market, reshaping the e-commerce landscape in the region. In 2021, Amazon.se generated net sales of around 430 billion U.S. dollars. With such a large revenue flow, Amazon poses a serious challenge to local marketplaces in the region. Other Nordic companies can now trade on Amazon.se, or opt for the German site Amazon.de. For Danish companies, Amazon.se already offers professional support in their native language. To what extent the e-commerce giant will impact online retailing in the region remains to be seen.Electronics and media were the top-selling categories on Amazon's Swedish platform in 2021. With around 20 percent of sales, toys and hobby products were the second-largest category. In February 2022, most Amazon mobile shoppers were under 35 years old. That same year, Swedish shoppers downloaded the Amazon app a staggering 442,000 times. It was also a popular marketplace app in other Nordic countries, signaling growing popularity in the region.
Homegrown players
While multinational Amazon is a business-to-consumer (B2C) platform, local players are the biggest consumer-to-consumer (C2C) marketplaces in the Nordics. C2C marketplaces are platforms that facilitate transactions between private sellers and buyers. Essentially, these are forums where people can sell their used goods online in order to make some extra cash.The Norwegian Schibsted Media Group has a firm hold on the Nordic C2C market. Founded in 1839 as a publishing company, the company now operates some of the biggest online marketplaces in the Nordics: Finn, Blocket, Tori, and DBA. In the third quarter of 2022, Schibsted's marketplaces generated over 1.2 billion Norwegian kroner in revenue. The segments motors (32 percent), jobs (25 percent), and real estate (16 percent) made up the highest revenue shares. The Schibsted marketplaces attract millions of visitors every month. In December 2022, users visited Finn 39 million times, Blocket over 23 million times, and Tori approximately 18 million times.
