Key stat: 43% of shoppers worldwide say difficulty assessing product quality is the main reason they avoid buying certain products on online marketplaces, making it the leading barrier to purchase, according to a January report from ChannelEngine and Sapio Research.

Beyond the chart:

• The stakes are high because marketplaces are where most shopping journeys begin. 51% of consumers in the US, UK, and Canada use online marketplaces as their primary product research channel, according to Salsify, meaning quality perception failures are happening at the exact point where purchase decisions start.
• Meanwhile, platforms have largely solved for checkout friction, making the trust gap more striking. Checkout abandonment rates dropped as much as 29.1% YoY in Q3 2025 across discretionary categories, according to AdScale, suggesting the easy UX problems are fixed while quality and authenticity concerns persist.

Use this chart: Drop this in your next marketplace or ecommerce strategy deck to show that product trust, not checkout UX, is the real conversion barrier. Use the 43% quality figure to reprioritize investments in product detail pages, reviews, and imagery. Show this to teams focused on conversion rate optimization.

Related reports:

• Infopack: Customer Experience 2026 (EMARKETER subscription required)
• 5 Inflection Points That Will Define US Retail (EMARKETER subscription required)

Methodology: Data is from the January 2026 ChannelEngine, "Marketplace Shopping Behavior Report 2026" in partnership with Sapio Research. 4,500 marketplace shoppers in the US, UK, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, were surveyed during October 2025.

We prepared this article with the assistance of generative AI tools and stand behind its accuracy, quality, and originality.