Demand
Requests, active customers and order intent.
Business Domains · Module 13
Marketplace Analytics.
Two-sided marketplaces fail when demand and supply stop meeting each other efficiently. The analyst has to reason about both sides at once.
Core idea
A marketplace metric is usually the result of demand × supply × matching quality.
01
Context
Requests are up. Completed orders are down.
“Customers want to order more, but fewer orders are completing. Do we need more acquisition or more supply?”
Acquisition is unlikely to be the first answer if requests already increased. Look at available supply, match rate, acceptance, ETA and cancellations.
Marketplace analysis is about bottlenecks between intent and successful fulfillment.
02
Marketplace funnel
Follow demand until it becomes fulfilled supply.
Supply
Available couriers, restaurants or inventory capacity.
Matching
Match rate, acceptance rate and time-to-match.
Fulfillment
ETA, completion, cancellation and contribution margin.
Rule
Never diagnose a marketplace from only the customer side or only the supply side.
03
Challenge
Find the marketplace bottleneck.
Exercise · 20 minutes
Decompose the failure.
- Which metric proves demand is healthy?
- How would you measure supply availability?
- Where could requests fail before assignment?
- Which cancellation reasons indicate supply pressure?
- How would geography/time-of-day change the analysis?
- Which incentive metric prevents solving volume at any cost?
04
AI assist
Ask AI to decompose both sides.
Marketplace diagnostic prompt
Business issue:
requests +6%, completed orders -9%.
Decompose into:
demand → supply availability → match rate → acceptance → pickup → completion.
Required cuts:
city, hour, weekday, courier cohort.
Include:
cancellation reasons, ETA, incentive cost per completed order.
Do not recommend acquisition changes unless demand weakness is demonstrated.
Separate volume impact from unit-economics impact.05
Validation
The marketplace checklist.
01
Are demand and supply measured in the same time/geography?
02
Is matching defined consistently?
03
Are cancellation reasons mutually understandable?
04
Could ETA changes be caused by distance/mix?
05
Did incentives change behavior or only cost?
06
Are unit economics included with growth metrics?
06
Worked takeaway
Diagnose the bottleneck, not the headline.
Confirm customer intent before discussing acquisition.
Measure availability where and when demand occurs.
Track acceptance and time-to-match.
Include incentive and contribution impact in the recommendation.
Analyst habit
When marketplace completion falls, ask where the request died.