The increased benefits of leveraging GS1 standards and services in marketplaces

For the more than 25 marketplaces around the world who are already using GS1 standards and services like GS1 GTINs and Verified by GS1, the benefits are clear: single product pages, increased traffic, faster listing process, a better way to detect counterfeits, simplified regulatory compliance and more.

That’s because access to trusted product identification allows marketplaces to perform a wide range of tasks, which in turn enables them to build better product catalogues and provide a better and safer consumer experience.

Even though many marketplaces have already adopted GS1 standards, we know that there are still many opportunities for us to engage more closely with the marketplace ecosystem, and many things we can do to ensure that our standards and services are fit for the online world.

This is the driving principle behind the development of our Marketplaces Programme. Its ambition is to address the product identification needs shared by marketplaces, integrators and sellers, with the main topics being GTIN duplicates and GTIN overuse. Our fundamental goal is to have marketplaces better understand and communicate the added value of global identification, in particular by recommending that sellers use GTINs to list products.

Our efforts are advancing according to plan, via a combination of work in standards, services, training and marketing, with a high level of participation from industry members and the GS1 federation.

Multiple initiatives to engage directly with marketplaces, sellers and brands are now underway locally, regionally and globally.

With GS1 Global Office support, GS1 Member Organisations in Latin America, Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and the US have grown their relationships with players such as Amazon, Google and Mercado Libre.
The focus is on topics such as access to product data via Verified by GS1 for catalogue improvement, education around standards, GTIN adoption and sustainability.

All our engagement efforts are bolstered by the active support of our Marketplace Advisory Team which consists of representatives from Alibaba, Amazon, bol.com, eBay, Google, Metro Markets and now also JD.com and Mercado Libre, both of whom joined this year to strengthen the team.

Looking forward, we will pursue our efforts to engage the marketplace ecosystem on the many ways that GS1 standards and services can support seller processes, fulfilment, regulatory requirements, sustainability activities, traceability programmes, anti-counterfeit initiatives and more.