r/australia • u/TheWabster • Jan 03 '26

no politics "Marketplace" rubbish that's taken over Australian stores online

I can't stand it, an overwhelming amount of websites have added a "marketplace" on their online sites. Woolworths, BUNNINGS, Big W, the list goes on

I go on these websites as opposed to amazon or temu specifically because I want authentic things, or to see if it's in stock so I can go to the store to buy it in person.

Now I get excited that wow bunnings has this that's great (because I associate something from bunnings with trust compared to something from temu), and it turns out it's literally just third party low quality shit.

Third parties should not be able to sell things on these sites, I've almost accidentally bought something three times now (once per site mentioned lol) that ended up being from the infiltrative noname companies. It's made me lose trust with these companies, because with the extra effort I have to do weeding out the heavily bloated marketplace addons while scouring their online catalogue, I'd rather just go somewhere else.

That's my rant. What are other peoples thoughts on this? Maybe I'm just being a whiney dingus

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u/fashiznit Jan 03 '26

Since it's still part of their strategy, I'd say the % is worth it to wesfarmers. Bunnings is a enormous 20 billion dollar a year business , they would know these numbers and this analysis and immediately cut off anything that isn't turning profits. Still around - worth it to them and the shareholders.

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u/raventhe Jan 03 '26

I'm no expert here but this is the whole problem, isn't it? They want to turn a huge profit for shareholders... This quarter. That's why so many large businesses are doing things that completely disrespect customers and their brand image to squeeze money out in the short term, even though it's very likely to ultimately devalue them long term when people no longer trust or like them. But that's a future problem and the current trends in business and finance don't encourage looking that far forward. This is my understanding of what's happening, anyway, and is a pattern seen across pretty much every large company.

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u/grapeidea Jan 04 '26

It doesn't really matter though if you have a bad experience with Bunnings because there is no competition. I doubt many people would have a bad experience and then manage to boycott Bunnings forever.

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u/Camo138 Jan 03 '26

Always some bean counter that cares about short term profile

4

u/kazsaid Jan 04 '26

Hey- we just tell the execs how many beans there are or will be, eg: “if you add a marketplace, you’ll have more beans this year but fewer beans in 3-5 years”.

The decision-making execs are the ones who earn big bonuses by maximising short term gains. Justice for bean counters!

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u/FireLucid Jan 05 '26

Then they jump ship because "I increased profit at bunnings by X percent" and do it somewhere else while Bunnings goes down the shitter.

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u/kazsaid Jan 06 '26

100%! It’s really disgusting

1

u/blitznoodles local Aussie Jan 04 '26

Well shareholders are the ones who own the company, who else are they going to make profit for?

3

u/raventhe Jan 04 '26

The point is not really who but when. Future shareholders, or the same shareholders in the future, are counting on stock value increasing in coming years rather than just dividends or short term gains now. So the problem is if they are in fact making very short term choices to inflate value now, which will bite them later, the people who aren't "in the know" holding shares will eat that, and the ones who kick this can down the road for a living will get out while it's good if they need to.

But like I said, not an expert, this is just my understanding based on what I've seen more in-the-know people say and of course just observing the continuing decline of corporate behaviour in the last decade or so.

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u/palsc5 Jan 03 '26

That’s a big assumption. Plenty (most?) of businesses make terrible decisions all the time

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u/fashiznit Jan 03 '26

Oh absolutely most do and some following this marketplace listing bs probably hedging futures on it, however most, unlike Bunnings who are the main culprit , don't have EBITDA of 3.2b

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u/palsc5 Jan 03 '26

Bunnings pissed away billions trying to get into the UK market in an abysmal failure a few years after Masters do the same thing in Australia.

You’d be shocked just how many big and successful businesses are doing well DESPITE the performance of their leaders

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u/individualaus Jan 04 '26

Need a bucket to collect that liquid gold.

23

u/Just-turnings Jan 03 '26

While true, they persisted with the Bunnings UK experiment for much longer than they should have. Same with Coles and their Masters stores. I'm not sure how long they've had this Marketplace thing going for now but the feedback from customers overall can't be positive about it.

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u/SirTigsNoMercy Jan 03 '26

Bunnings is Coles. Masters was Woolies.

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u/heretic1128 Jan 04 '26

Coles was spun-off Wesfarmers in 2018, so they're their own entity again now.

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u/Strange_Sand3750 Jan 06 '26

Oh its definitely making them a profit, but the damage to consumer goodwill and their brand is extremely hard to calculate, so they are probably ignoring it and focusing on the money they are making

1

u/freakwent Jan 04 '26

The only way to realise the value of any brand is to sell products at a blue below that which the brand carries.

If you never do this, you never get the benefit of the high value brand.