 Mercado Libre: the Amazon of Latin America?Sonia Filipetto and Gabriela Pontoni Chapter 12 in Unpacking Global Amazon, 2026, pp 300-320 from Edward Elgar Publishing Abstract: This chapter analyzes the Argentinian-born Mercado Libre (MeLi)—the “Amazon of Latin America.” With a US stock market listing and US trained CEO, this Latin American multinational has over 30 percent of the region's e-commerce market and leads Amazon in Brazil and Mexico where they compete head to head. The authors argue, examining the company's operations in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, that MeLi's local knowledge and locally tailored strategy explain the firm's success in connecting buyers and sellers to its payments system, e-commerce platform, and logistics services. MeLi's logistics and financial operations leverage pervasive informality and customers’ weak financial inclusion and lack of formal credit. Its labor model exploits jurisdictional rivalries across unions in warehousing and uses substantial subcontracting of last-mile logistics to small and often informal businesses. The chapter concludes by comparing MeLi and Amazon business models and how each may have learned from and emulated the other in certain aspects of their Latin American operations. Keywords: Latin American Multinational Corporation; Multilatina; Fintech; Financial Technology; Informal Sector; E-commerce Logistics; Amazon; Corporation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:25133_13 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing |
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