PLATAFORMAS DIGITAIS NO BRASIL: A EXPANSÃO DA EMPRESA MERCADO LIVRE NO TERRITÓRIO

THE TERRITORIAL EXPANSION OF MERCADO LIVRE

Abstract

The rise, consolidation, and rapid expansion of platform companies in Brazil are examined in this study through the case of Mercado Livre. A mixed-methods approach is adopted—comprising qualitative and quantitative analysis of public documents, legal proceedings, institutional reports, and spatial mappings—to investigate how the company's territorialisation reveals institutional, political, and spatial specificities characteristic of the Global South. The study demonstrates that Mercado Livre’s business model is sustained by the continuous capture and monetisation of data, the mobilisation of a workforce engaged in precarious, flexible, and unprotected labour, and the extraction and utilisation of state incentives such as subsidies, tax exemptions, and special fiscal regimes. These elements reveal the articulation between the neoliberal logic of the free market (which gives the company its name) and the structural inequalities embedded in the territory. It is argued that such operational modalities tend to assume even more pernicious forms in structurally unequal contexts, such as Brazil. The findings underscore the urgency of a critical geography capable of grasping the territorial and world-of-work impacts of digital platforms and the profound transformations they engender in the general conditions of production in contemporary capitalism.