Marketplace Pain Points🔥

Happy Monday! Marketplace sellers aren’t fighting each other—they’re fighting their own to-do lists. Manual work and mounting complexity are draining profits and patience, but automation is coming for the chaos.

Maze Story🌀
🔥 Marketplace Pain Points
🧠 Too Many Tasks

P.S. If you haven’t yet, drop a quick recommendation for MarketMaze! And if you run an e-commerce company, get your team on board too. The bigger the tribe, the sharper the insights. Pinky promise! We want to start running surveys across our readers (top ecommerce minds, executives, managers, sellers and marketers) to surface data no one else has!

LET’S ENTER THE MAZE!
- Artur Stańczuk, MarketMaze Founder

Tech moves fast, but you're still playing catch-up?

That's exactly why 100K+ engineers working at Google, Meta, and Apple read The Code twice a week.

Here's what you get:

All delivered twice a week in just 2 short emails.

Join 100K+ engineers

Marketplace sellers are no longer loyal to just one channel. According to the Marketplace Seller Trends Report 2025 by ChannelEngine, sellers are spreading operations wider and fighting a manual workload crisis. This data, drawn from a June–July 2025 survey of 470 executives across the US and Europe, reveals how complexity and legacy processes keep sellers working overtime.

The typical seller now operates on 4–6 marketplaces, with just 2% sticking to a single one. Nearly a third (29%) manage two to three, but a full 36% handle four to six. Ambitious players push even further: 23% operate on seven to ten, and 11% are on more than ten at once. Market reach is everything, and sellers are casting the widest nets they can… though every new platform multiplies the operational headache.

Most sellers have turned to technology to help manage complexity, with 62% using integrators. But 52% still rely on spreadsheets to handle product updates, exposing a gap between tech optimism and daily reality. Direct integrations and product feeds each serve 48% of respondents, and 45% continue with manual updates. Even with agencies in the mix for 37%, sellers can’t automate their way out of messy data and constant tweaks. No matter the stack, the grind continues.

Automation dreams hit a wall with manual workload: 21% of sellers spend more than half their week on repetitive marketplace tasks. Only 6% say manual work is almost negligible, but for the rest, it’s a real drag. 33% dedicate 11–25% of their week and 39% burn up to half. Just 1% are truly automated. With the demands of multi-channel selling, legacy processes are keeping sellers on a treadmill that never slows down.

Editable Slides & source links:
🔒 Available for MarketMaze+

Most Amazon sellers don’t need more SKUs. They need pricing and ads that work together. Feedvisor 360 uses AI to adjust prices in real time and optimize ad spend for profit, sales, and market share.

✔ AI repricing that reacts to competitors and inventory
✔ Smarter Amazon ads across Sponsored Products, Brands, Video, Display, and DSP
✔ Clear reporting for revenue, return on ad spend (RoAS), and share of voice

Add brains before you cut price. Your Buy Box share will thank you.

👉 Experience Feedvisor’s “AI-Advantage,” free for 14 days

Sellers are caught in a crossfire of rising complexity and shrinking margins. The Marketplace Seller Trends Report 2025 lays bare the realities for 470 US and EU executives: manual work dominates, operational headaches are everywhere, and even the winners are feeling squeezed. The big promise? Most believe automation and AI will be the only way out.

Pricing updates eat up 36% of sellers’ time, making them the top manual burden, closely followed by returns at 33%. Promotions and campaign tweaks (32%), performance reporting (30%), and inventory syncing (30%) all pile on the pressure. Listing uploads, fixing errors, and even managing settlements are not far behind, showing just how fragmented and manual daily marketplace work remains.

Nearly half of sellers say handling returns (48%) and launching new products (48%) are their most frequent operational headaches. Repricing inefficiency (47%) and content inconsistency (46%) aren’t far behind, and around 45% struggle with syncing inventory or updating product info. From analytics to outdated listings, the struggle spans the entire marketplace workflow, slowing growth at every turn.

When forced to pick their single hardest challenge, 29% of sellers put pricing and visibility at the top, followed by shifting requirements, backend integration, and advertising—each cited by 27%. Issues with returns, profitability, fulfillment, and internal gaps trail just behind. Only a lucky 10% report no pain at all, meaning nearly everyone is fighting fires somewhere along the line.

Marketplace fees (35%) and shipping costs (29%) are squeezing seller profits hardest. Delays in getting listings live (23%) and stock issues (22%) also drag down margins, while manual overhead and returns each hurt 20% of sellers. Lack of data and poor pricing strategy still eat away at profit for nearly a fifth of the market, showing just how thin margins have become.

The grind has made one thing clear: automation is non-negotiable. 91% of sellers call automation critical or very important, and a third expect AI assistants (36%) or AI personalization (32%) to deliver the biggest changes in the next 2–3 years. Social commerce, fast delivery, compliance, and fragmentation are next in line. For those still clinging to spreadsheets, the message is simple: automate or get left behind.

Editable slides and source links: 🔒 Available for MarketMaze+

SHARE THE MAZE

Your network thinks you’re as smart as the content you share. Share smarter stuff and help us grow. Win–win. Here’s what you get when friends join the Maze:

Here is your unique referral link to share with friends:

{{rp_refer_url}}

and link to the hub to check your progress.

Craving more sharp reads? Check out these MarketMaze-recommended newsletters.

THAT’S IT FOR TODAY!

Before you go, we’d love your feedback on today’s Maze to help us improve!

See you next time in the maze!
MarketMaze team