TikTok chases SEA e-commerce leaders

With sales up 7x in one year across Southeast Asia, TikTok’s e-commerce operation is finding its feet in one of the most competitive and e-commerce friendly regions on earth.

Why TikTok’s e-commerce moves matter

It's coming for an e-commerce market dominated by Shopee, Lazada, and Tokopedia – all heavyweights from the shopping side. TikTok’s advantage appears to be a combination of sticky social features (and some generous offers to sellers).

What’s interesting is that TikTok’s idea of media retail has been in the works for a long time but without huge success. Now, it appears, in an age of retail media (advertising by retailers), driven by the imperative to show returns on investment, a media-first offer is finding its feet.

What’s going on

Though TikTok accounts for a relatively small amount of the $100bn Southeast Asian e-commerce market ($4.4bn gross merchandise value, while Shopee takes 10x that figure), the attraction tends to come from producers’ and retailers’ own interest in the app as well as an acknowledgment of its popularity among audiences, especially.

• Nikkei Asia, exploring the trend, surfaces a handful of examples of producers or retailers that have integrated TikTok social shopping and the requisite content production demands into their day to day.
• While the app has bigger global ambitions for shopping, in Southeast Asia up to a quarter of its 325m monthly users have bought through TikTok shop.
• The concern, however, is that many shoppers are young and are buying relatively low-value impulse goods. TikTok’s task now will be to become a channel for higher-value items and to start to cater for typically wealthier older shoppers.

Sourced from Nikkei Asia via FT