TikTok rethinks its e-commerce strategy | WARC | The Feed

TikTok rethinks its e-commerce strategy

TikTok is rethinking the global rollout of its shopping features, in recognition that new strategies are needed to take its popular service in East Asia around the world. 

TikTok Shop allows influencers and advertisers to display shoppable products in clips or livestreams, either in-app or offsite. According to the Financial Times, the division is changing the location of its development teams to get them close to target markets. 

Why it matters

Following a bumpy few years for the short-form video site’s e-commerce division, TikTok is effectively moving the developers working on its marketplace offer closer to the markets in which it is already live – across much of Southeast Asia, the US, and the UK.

The broader lesson, however, is a useful one about how a global strategy often needs local execution and understanding, especially when attempting to normalise a new shopping behaviour.

Livestream shopping?

Popular – and lucrative – with Douyin’s consumers and creators alike, social shopping has been slower to take off around the rest of the world, suggesting that copying a previously successful strategy doesn’t naturally pay off. Or at least not in the same conversion-focused way.

Brands may want to think about the brand building and education potential of livestreams rather than simply as an Asian-style conversion channel. Most brands in the UK just link to product pages, similar to Instagram’s shopping products.

TikTok Shop’s context

• TikTok Shop went live in the UK in 2021, but it has struggled to catch on – some reports even suggested it was scrapping an European and American rollout altogether, which was later corrected by the company to more of a slowdown as it worked out how to adapt the offer to Western markets. Several new market expansions have been delayed multiple times.

• The service was also further mired after reports of a “toxic” work culture. The commerce division’s London chief resigned as a result. But numerous development roles are now being relocated to London from other offices like Spain and Brazil.

• While not related to this story, this all takes place amid a backdrop of political heat from across the United States, where congressional scrutiny and a ban in the state of Montana – which is yet to take effect – keep the service in the headlines.

Sourced from Financial Times, WARC