ONLINE MARKETPLACES AND THEIR EFFECT ON COMPETITION AND PRICE FORMATION

Abstract

Online marketplaces have become one of the main institutions of the digital economy because they connect sellers and buyers, reduce search costs, expand consumer choice and make prices more visible. At the same time, they may create new forms of market power when a platform controls search ranking, seller fees, delivery rules, advertising visibility and consumer data. This article analyzes the effect of online marketplaces on competition and price formation using a conceptual dual-effect framework and selected real data from UNCTAD, the U.S. Census Bureau, Eurostat, Amazon and the International Trade Administration. The results show that platform commerce has reached macroeconomic scale: global B2B e-commerce in 43 countries reached USD 27 trillion in 2022, U.S. retail e-commerce reached USD 308.9 billion in Q4 2024, and Uzbekistan’s e-commerce market reached USD 1.2 billion in 2024. These indicators confirm that online marketplaces are not only sales channels but also private market organizers. The article concludes that online marketplaces strengthen competition when they increase seller entry and price comparison, but they may weaken competition when platform concentration, ranking opacity, algorithmic pricing and data asymmetry allow dominant platforms to influence final prices