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As the endDXSESAMYYour browser does not support the element. of the year draws closer, shopping season is in full swing. On , November 29th, retailers will offer steep discounts to lure customers. Some sales started weeks ago. Soon will come the mad dash for Christmas gifts.This year, though, many consumers will shop not in stores or on e-commerce sites, but via social-media apps. Social commerce—online purchases that originate on social media—will reach $72bn in America in 2024, reckons eMarketer, a research firm, accounting for 6% of online sales. That is up from $47bn in 2022, and expected to reach $100bn in 2026 (see chart). A growing share of those transactions can be completed without requiring shoppers to leave the social-media platform.Leading the trend is TikTok, a short-video app owned by Bytedance, a Chinese tech giant. The app, which is battling an effort by lawmakers in America to have it banned or sold off, hopes to bring to the West a business model that blurs the line between shopping and entertainment. TikTok Shop, an e-commerce feature added to the app in Britain in 2021 and America last year, lets users scroll through posts about products, watch live shopping events and buy items with just a few clicks. The app takes a 9% commission on sales in Britain and 6% in America. TikTok also now has a logistics service that takes care of packing, delivery and returns for merchants.Although TikTok Shop is growing fast, making social commerce as widespread in the West as it is in China will not be straightforward. Meta has made various attempts to embed e-commerce into Facebook and Instagram without gaining much traction. For TikTok Shop to continue expanding, it will need to overcome hesitancy from consumers, brands and the that connect them.In China, the distinction between shopping and entertainment has already grown fuzzy. Social commerce will account for $900bn of online sales in the country this year, according to eMarketer, representing almost 30% of all e-commerce. Douyin, TikTok’s sister-app in China, and Kuaishou, its main local competitor, are now among the country’s biggest e-commerce platforms, based on the value of merchandise sold through them.In the West, however, shoppers have been slower to embrace social media as a place to buy stuff. In a recent survey of Americans by Simplicity , a marketing-software firm, 62% thought social media was a helpful place to learn about new products, but 74% still preferred to buy things on traditional e-commerce sites.It doesn’t help that the products currently sold on social media tend to be cheap impulse purchases, from snacks to silly toys. When your correspondent opened TikTok Shop, she was offered a 30-pack of Diet Coke and a stuffed toy shaped like French fries. Joe Gagliese of Viral Nation, a marketing agency, points out that many merchants on the platform are unknown companies that sell a single item. TikTok Shop is designed to encourage impulse shopping; when products are discounted, for instance, a clock is sometimes displayed with a countdown to the end of the sale. Another recent survey found that more than half of Americans who shopped on social media regretted their purchase.Big brands have also been wary. Plenty have embraced social media as a place to advertise their products, often with the help of influencers. And some, including Puma, a sportswear brand, and L’Oréal, a beauty giant, have begun to sell through TikTok Shop. Jack Timpany, a marketing executive at L’Oréal, says that it is a useful way to get new products in front of consumers. “It’s pretty hard to do that on your traditional e-commerce channels where you’re limited by what people put in the search bar,” he says. “It’s all about discovery,” says Jan Wilk, head of operations for TikTok Shop in Britain.Other companies, however, have balked at the idea. GymShark, a sportswear brand that has relied heavily on influencer marketing to raise its profile, has held off on selling directly through TikTok. Noel Mack, who looks after brand strategy for the company, says that is because much of the emphasis on TikTok Shop is around selling products at deep discounts.Influencers, whose content helps drive engagement on TikTok, also need more persuading. They may be happy to promote products on behalf of brands, for a fee, but many have been reluctant to push the cheap wares typically found on TikTok Shop. Social-media users in the West have grown more sceptical of influencers who act as salesmen. “The follower has become a lot smarter,” says Samantha Bergmann, founder of , an influencer-marketing agency. “You can no longer sell them something that doesn’t actually fit your brand.” The buzzword in the industry is “authenticity”, explains Eric Sheridan of Goldman Sachs, a bank. That may be hard to maintain while peddling stuffed toys.
