If you are thinking about starting an online business, then there are several roads you can take. E-commerce stores and online marketplaces are the most effective ways to achieve your goal. The choice between the two depends on your business’s state, needs and goals. If you know the difference between the two, then you will be able to figure out what to choose.
While developing the marketplace you’ve to consider the following:

Inventory
Online marketplaces are large businesses that deal with different vendors who provide their catalogs and typically carry much more inventory than online stores. Usually, when an online store owner manages their own stock and inventory, they have to invest heavily in stock acquisition and management on starting the business (except for drop shipping models). But in the case of an online marketplace, the catalog offered is held by external vendors and thus, the investment in stock management is not a big deal (except for hybrid marketplaces).

As a result, the marketplace owners just need to make sure that their sellers are adhering to the quality regulations and guidelines.

Customer satisfaction
When operating an online marketplace, there’s so much to consider like inventory management, site management, customer service, marketing, sales, social media, content, etc. But when you are running a marketplace, the main focus is simply to offer the best platform for the users, i.e., for the sellers and the customers they sell to.

With different merchants selling at a single platform, marketplaces tend to give an exciting shopping experience for customers as they find cheaper options and new alternatives. So, if a marketplace functions well then it can be a huge community of highly satisfied customers.

Scalable
They offer more lean and scalable business models to the marketplace owners. Some of the world’s biggest marketplace owners like Uber, Airbnb, and Amazon are great examples for the same. As Tom Goodwin said, they don’t own what they sell but they are creating a platform for the sellers and consumers. While they have to sell a large number of products or services, the fact that the focus is on the platform and reaching more customers means that economies of scale are easier to achieve. So, when compared to other digital businesses, those who are new to the marketplace will be surprised by what they achieve with a relatively small team.

Shopping experience
One thing that unites all the vendors on a marketplace is that there’s just a single checkout process. When customers shop on this platform, they don’t have to click away to different websites to complete the transaction. So when you buy from different sellers on a single platform at the same time, there won’t be any complication even though the merchants aren’t associated.