According to a Financial Times report, TikTok is planning on expanding into the U.S. E-commerce Market. This expansion marks an important milestone for TikTok’s product offering – with many new features set to be introduced in 2021.
The most notable feature is an affiliate marketing tool that allows Tiktok’s most viral and followed users to link promoted products and earn a commission on sales transacted via the link. TikTok also hopes to give a modern twist to the television channel shopping experience by providing mobile live stream shopping to its users.
Additionally, TikTok is set to introduce a feature that will directly put brand catalogues on it’s platform in a bid to centralize mobile shopping on its interface.
This expansion into E-commerce puts TikTok in a competitive position against rivals such as Instagram and Facebook, who already offer E-commerce related services on their platforms. But will TikTok come to dominate this space?
Here’s why they could:
Social media is increasingly moving from photo to video content: this is evident by the success of TikTok, the leader of short-form video sharing . E-commerce brands who want to be successful should take note of this transition to video and position their products in this format.
Moreover, compared to rivals, TikTok has a considerably younger audience, which creates a large opportunity for brands to access the millennial and generation z market.
In an October 2020 interview with TechCrunch, Tik Tok also announced a new partnership with E-commerce platform Shopify. Through this partnership, users will be able to connect their TikTok business account to their Shopify account and sell their own products via TikTok’s Feed through shoppable video ads. This strategic partnership further positions TikTok as a potential forerunner in social-media based E-commerce.
In the short term, we will have to wait and see if TikTok’s upcoming launch of E-commerce features will boost its authority in the E-commerce space.