EXPRESS: Curating the Marketplace Brand: How Seller-Mix Curation Shapes Perceived Localness, Perceived Globalness and Marketplace Brand Attitude

Online marketplaces increasingly curate which third-party sellers they make salient to consumers, yet it remains unclear whether this seller-mix curation shapes how consumers perceive the marketplace brand itself. Drawing on signalling theory and research on brand-related spillovers, this paper introduces seller-to-marketplace brand attribute spillover as a marketplace branding mechanism and examines how curated seller mixes shape perceived brand localness and perceived brand globalness and, in turn, marketplace brand attitude. Two randomised experiments with quota-sampled German consumers show that seller-mix curation can shift local and global marketplace brand perceptions, with downstream effects on marketplace brand attitude. Environmental consciousness shapes how consumers translate these perceptions into brand evaluations, while marketplace brand origin selectively moderates globalness-related spillover. The findings show that marketplace operators can alter marketplace brand perceptions through the seller mixes they make salient without changing the marketplace brand’s core identity. The study contributes to research on online marketplace branding, local and global brand perceptions, and spillover effects, thereby identifying seller-mix curation as a marketplace branding instrument.