Marketplace News Update: TikTok Logistics, Wolt’s local commerce and LOTS of AI #LTM140

The marketplace landscape is changing rapidly - not through isolated innovations, but through a fundamental redistribution of control. TikTok is building its own logistics infrastructure in Europe, Google is opening up agent-based commerce via the Universal Commerce Protocol, Amazon and eBay are closing their catalogs to AI agents, OpenAI is introducing a new fee tier with Instant Checkout, and Temu continues to grow through radical control over prices and processes. In this news episode, Ingrid joins Marcus Höhne, entrepreneur in a family business and long-time marketplace practitioner, to examine what these developments mean from a retailer's perspective. Together, they discuss where operational complexity is really increasing—and where it is merely being shifted, when additional fees are still manageable and when margins are structurally eroding, how logistics or price control are creating new dependencies, and which platforms still offer optional access instead of implicit lock-in.

Note from the sponsor base:

Repricing on marketplaces is often seen as a margin killer. But that assumption is misleading. Base, a solution provider for marketplace integration and repricing, knows from his practical experience: It’s not repricing that’s the problem - it’s the lack of strategy behind it. On marketplaces, visibility isn’t determined by the lowest product price, but by the total offer price - including shipping, fees and overall cost logic. Without clear guardrails, automation can quickly lead to margin erosion. What’s needed are solid fundamentals: a clear definition of relevant competitors, category-specific repricing rules, minimum prices, margin thresholds - and a realistic understanding of how Buy Box mechanics actually work. That’s exactly what we break down in detail in our new blog article. Click here to learn more about repricing!

Note from the sponsor eDesk:

Marketplace customer support often feels chaotic. In reality, it is surprisingly predictable. Most tickets revolve around the same recurring questions: Where is my order? Has it shipped yet? Can I still cancel? When teams answer these requests manually, they are not doing customer support - they are doing administrative work. At significant cost. eDesk addresses exactly this problem. As a helpdesk solution built specifically for marketplace and multichannel sellers, eDesk connects the inbox directly to more than 300 marketplaces - from Amazon and eBay to Mirakl and Kaufland. Instead of simply centralizing messages, it adds context: order status, tracking data, and relevant marketplace information are immediately available and can be answered automatically. Less tab switching, less copy-pasting, and more reliable SLAs. Which ten support questions account for the majority of all tickets - and how they can be automated - is detailed in our new Deep Dive “Marketplace Support Reality".