TikTok Shop Launches in US

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Facts

  • TikTok’s e-commerce service, TikTok Shop, has officially launched in the US, the company announced in a blog post Tuesday, as it looks to bring online shopping to its 150M American users.1
  • The popular social media platform has been testing its online marketplace since August and has added a “Shop Tab” to its app. It has also put affiliate videos in user feeds that will allow creators to earn commissions from products and created a logistics arm called Fulfilled by TikTok.2
  • TikTok spokesperson Laura Perez says more than 200K sellers have already registered for TikTok Shop, while 100K content creators have joined an affiliate program that allows users with 5K followers to create videos that will be pushed into TikTok’s “For You” feed.3
  • ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, has been experimenting with online shopping formats in the UK and Southeast Asia and has been developing TikTok’s e-commerce in the US since last November. TikTok has had a longstanding partnership with Shopify to bring shopping solutions for businesses.4
  • TikTok Shop was already available to 630M people around the world, and it's looking to use its popularity with younger demographics to grow its presence in the e-commerce space. Bloomberg says TikTok is looking to quadruple its merchandise sales and hit $20B by the end of 2023.5
  • TikTok Shop’s US rollout comes as state and local governments continue to ban the app over its affiliation with China. Despite the regulatory concerns, TikTok looks to expand into areas such as book publishing, music streaming, and messaging.6

Sources: 1Reuters, 2Abc news, 3Associated Press, 4TechCrunch, 5CNN and 6Verge.

Narratives

  • Narrative A, as provided by Productsup.com. TikTok is one of the most powerful social media platform in the world, and it is the future of any industry it chooses to enter. TikTok Shop will change the landscape of e-commerce since it has the built-in access to Gen Z that many other platforms lack. It has carefully ironed out the logistics to create an e-commerce platform that is easy to use and links buyers and sellers like never before.
  • Narrative B, as provided by Time. TikTok Shop might not be the smashing success many anticipate it to be as there are many kinks the company needs to iron out before it can fully take advantage of its large pool of users. While it may be growing amongst certain groups, social commerce doesn’t account for a large percentage of total online shopping sales, and it could take quite some time for it to be a dominant part of e-commerce.