Discover LACME: The Latin America and the Caribbean Marketplace Explorer

The COVID-19 pandemic and containment measures have strongly impacted Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), altering the activities and business models of companies, especially micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), and shopping habits. In this context, electronic and digital commerce showed unprecedented growth as businesses and consumers turned to digital channels to maintain their activities. However, a lack of timely data to monitor trends in both domestic and international e-commerce marketplaces may hinder the ability of governments and businesses to formulate appropriate strategies to promote the digital economy and trade further.

In this context, the International Trade Centre (ITC), the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UN-ECLAC), and the Centre for Market Insights of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences have developed a new free and innovative dashboard called the LAC Marketplace Explorer (LACME). The development of this tool is also supported by the Forum for East Asia–Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC).

LACME is the first tool that allows a LAC-wide analysis of B2C goods-oriented marketplaces. The dashboard explores trends in marketplace usage from 2019 to 2022, relative adoption of marketplaces across 33 countries, and country-by-country benchmarking. The tool covers visitor traffic and main characteristics of almost 900 marketplaces and 2,900 marketplace websites targeting the 33 markets with a country-specific url, webpage, or subdomain.

This publication analyses the Latin America and Caribbean marketplace landscape. This document describes the main characteristics of online platforms in the region, their distribution across countries, and traffic evolution from 2019 to 2021. This data is combined with country-level indicators to study structural determinants of marketplace activity.

In our session, we will showcase how this tool can be used by policymakers and business associations, analyze the marketplace landscape in the region, and discuss how marketplaces can contribute to digital development and transformation of MSMEs in the post-pandemic recovery.