Publisher Fact Sheet From an acclaimed e-business visionary, the first in-depth exploration of the most important innovation in e-business today: mass customization.

Inspired by the success of platforms such as Airbnb, Etsy or Fiverr? Want to know how to build an online marketplace business? This is the book for you. In this step by step guide, we will go through everything you need to know about developing your idea into a sustainable business, offering lots of practical advice and actionable ideas along the way. This book is the result of two experts putting almost two decades of experience together, in order to create a repeatable method for creating a successful online marketplace. The applicable tactics and techniques can be studied in advance, helping you avoid the most common pitfalls. It's a handbook for anyone building an online marketplace. The same methods will apply whether your organization is a startup, a cooperative, a non-profit, or a big brand. Not every marketplace will be as big as Airbnb and Uber, but we believe there are thousands of marketplace ideas out there that can make for great, sustainable businesses. With the help of this book, you're one step closer to building the next one. Critical acclaim "Juho and Cristóbal have written a practical in-the-weeds guide on marketplace execution that will prove invaluable for all entrepreneurs looking to start a marketplace. No fluff, just actionable ideas." - Sangeet Paul Choudary, best-selling author of Platform Revolution and Platform Scale "Building marketplaces can be hard. The Lean Marketplace is a very useful step-by-step guide to help entrepreneurs think through the challenges and solutions to create the next Uber or Airbnb." - Boris Wertz, Founder and General Partner, Version One Ventures "Must read for every marketplace entrepreneur. I'm going to ask everyone in our team to read this book." - Bram de Zwart, Co-founder and CEO, 3D Hubs "As I'm friends with both authors, I know first hand that the information in their book is hard won from long experience helping dozens of marketplaces succeed and consulting the top experts from around the world. However, the quality and comprehensiveness of the content speaks for itself. It covers all the essentials of growing an online marketplace, and in the most straightforward way possible. It is an impressively practical, must read resource for any current or aspiring marketplace entrepreneur. I can't recommend it highly enough, but please see for yourself." - Neal Gorenflo, Co-founder of Shareable "The essential guide to building an essential marketplace." - Tristan Pollock, Co-founder, Storefront, Partner, 500 Startups "Reading Juho's and Cristobal's advice online before launching our platform helped us save so much time and avoid the most common mistakes. If you're considering building a marketplace business, read this book first. Seriously." - Agne Milukaite, Co-founder and CEO, Cycle.land "Envisioning, validating, building and growing a marketplace is no small challenge: the most important aspect to nailing this challenge down is all about avoiding losing time and energy in the myriad of wrong directions that can come up your way. This book is an essential guide, the lifeboat for the marketplace founder that faces the ocean of bootstrapping." - Simone Cicero, platform strategist and consultant, creator of Platform Design Toolkit "I bootstrapped my marketplace business from launch to profitability in 6 months. Reading this book will help you do the same." - Mike Williams, CEO and Founder, Studiotime

Despite the recent misfortunes of many dotcoms, e-commerce will have major and lasting effects on economic activity. But the rise and fall in the valuations of the first wave of e-commerce companies show that vague promises of distant profits are insufficient. Only business models based on sound economic propositions will survive. This book provides professionals, investors, and MBA students the tools they need to evaluate the wide range of actual and potential e-commerce businesses at the microeconomic level. It demonstrates how these tools can be used to assess a variety of existing applications. Advances in web-based technology--particularly automation and delegation technologies such as smart agents, shopping bots, and bidding elves--support the further growth of e-commerce. In addition to enabling consumers to conduct automated comparisons and sellers to access visitors' background information in real time, such software programs can make decisions for individuals, negotiate with other programs, and participate in online markets. Much of e-commerce's economic value arises from this kind of automation, which not only reduces operating costs but adds value by generating new market interactions. This text teaches how to analyze the added value of such applications, considering consumer behavior, pricing strategies, incentives, and other critical factors. It discusses added value in several e-commerce arenas: online shopping, business-to-business e-commerce, application design, online negotiation (one-to-one trading), online auctions (one-to-many trading), and many-to-many electronic exchanges. Combining insights from several years of microeconomic research as well as from game theory and computer science, it stresses the importance of economic engineering in application design as well as the need for business models to take into account the "total game." As the only serious treatment of the microeconomics of e-commerce, this book should be read by anyone seeking e-commerce solutions or planning to work in the field.

Increasingly, multimedia content—from music, movies, games, news, books, and digital art to sharable educational material, e-government services, and e-health services—is delivered over broadband networks. With technological advances, cloud computing applications, and social networking approaches, many exciting applications are emerging to deliver this content as Interactive Digital Media (IDM). Understanding the Interactive Digital Media Marketplace: Frameworks, Platforms, Communities and Issues presents the results of a large, industry-oriented, multi-national research program. This research seeks to discover usable business models, technology platforms, market strategies and policy frameworks for the emerging global digital economy, particularly for digital media researchers and industry entrepreneurs who wish to reach users around the world.

Increasingly, multimedia content from music, movies, games, news, books, and digital art to sharable educational material, e-government services, and e-health services is delivered over broadband networks. With technological advances, cloud computing applications, and social networking approaches, many exciting applications are emerging to deliver this content as Interactive Digital Media (IDM). Understanding the Interactive Digital Media Marketplace: Frameworks, Platforms, Communities and Issues presents the results of a large, industry-oriented, multi-national research program. This research seeks to discover usable business models, technology platforms, market strategies and policy frameworks for the emerging global digital economy, particularly for digital media researchers and industry entrepreneurs who wish to reach users around the world.

In this intriguing blend of branding how-to and business memoir, an industry pioneer presents the thought process and tools to create a successful Ecommerce business by developing a distinct emotional attraction to a brand, beyond individual product offerings. Leveraging her 26 years of experience in online marketing and branding, Joan Abraham reveals the thought process behind successfully addressing today’s marketing challenge: clearly defining the business’s brand essence using its owned social media channels to personalize the full character of the brand. Creating Brand Cool addresses the importance of developing a unique state of being that personally resonates with today’s consumer. Abraham energizes the creative and strategic thinking for attracting and maintaining brand loyalty when the competition is a click away. Appealing to branding and social media marketing professionals, as well as students in these fields, this book is a primer for building an online community and distinguishing a brand from the competition. It is relevant to all types of business, from small businesses to globally recognized brands.

Mikitani, founder of e-commerce giant Rakuten, has seen the next battleground in the Internet. Today's major e-commerce players are building borderless platforms that are overturning the brick-and-mortar model, and changing the way local businesses think. But is this good or bad?