The impact of E-commerce giants on SMEs: Challenges, opportunities, and the fight for survival in the digital economy

Small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) have not been spared by the drastic changes that the surge of online marketplaces has brought to the business environment. The development in online markets places severe challenges as well as opportunities for the small business as the dominant online retail market is controlled by massive e-commerce companies. Its findings unveil the complexity of nature between today’s giants of the digital economy and e-commerce and SMEs. The present review is predominantly based on the material that was published in the subjects within the last five years, including academic journals, company reports, and economic statistics. Employing this methodology, market forces, technology advancement and its implications on the economic relationship between the established e-commerce marketplace giants and SMEs are evaluated. As mentioned in the study, new opportunities are opening up and these conventional business models are likely to be broken due to the shifting dynamics between these e-commerce giants and SMEs. A pressing challenge familiar to many SMEs is great competition, although previous studies showed that, with the help of digitalization, organizations can develop new growth and development prospects. Some of the key issues amplifying success or failure of SMEs in the digital marketplace are as follows Technological readiness Strategic positioning Ability to harness platform ecosystems. The research confirms that effective policies are needed to maintain the competition combined with the opportunities to grow SMEs in the digital economy. As a result, one of the most important challenges is to determine how SMEs can use the opportunities offered by large e-commerce platforms while avoiding the loss of their own brand and clientele. This research underlines the crucial need of the synergistic approach to the online marketplace and the long-term partnership between the giant e-commerce platforms and small and medium enterprises (SMEs). From this study, we can therefore argue that SMEs are equally capable of thriving and can even survive the current digital business environment by being availed with the right tools and support.