Live shopping is having a moment. As the staid but lucrative format trudges on in the halls of QVC, it’s finding new life among social apps. Everyone from Instagram to Amazon has launched live shopping feeds for their merchants – a subset of the larger social commerce and “shoppability” movements.
Now, naturally, TikTok appears to be doing something similar but in a different way. Specifically, it’s looking to outsource the function rather than build it internally. Financial Times reports that TikTok is in discussions with TalkShopLive to provide live shopping functionality and infrastructure in the U.S..
The goal, like others that have gone down this road, is to offer brands and creators easy ability to get up and running with their own live shopping streams. This would be part of a broader effort to attract creators – competing with other social apps for the same – as they’re the fuel for social commerce.
Shopping for a Partner
Backing up, this isn’t TikTok’s first foray into live shopping. It previously launched a similar integration as a trial run in the U.K. last year after previously testing it in Asia. But the effort didn’t meet expectations so it was shelved in July before it had the chance to roll out to other planned markets like the U.S.
But now TikTok is back to the drawing board with the revamped partner approach noted above. This suggests that the effort wasn’t necessarily unsuccessful in terms of user traction, but that the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze when it came to back-end integration cost and time (read: opportunity cost).
So the partnership approach will presumably let it test the live-shopping waters in the U.S., without eating up time and mindshare from its product teams. This is a key consideration for a high-growth company like TikTok with many avenues to pursue. And live shopping demand signals in the U.S. are iffy.
Specifically, U.S. shoppers haven’t been as keen on live shopping as markets in Asia. Despite the resurgence of live shopping noted above, the U.S. has been slightly lower in terms of shopper affinity. Other evidence can be seen in Facebook’s live shopping retreat to focus instead on Reels.
As for TikTok’s shopping (excuse the pun) for a partner, Financial Times reports that TalkShopLive will likely take a 10 percent commission from sellers as payment for its back-end role. It’s also unclear when the fruits of this partnership will hit the U.S. market but we’ll be watching closely for clues.
Mixed Results
Back to social commerce and shoppability, Accenture projects the former to reach $1.2 trillion by 2025. This is all about social apps like Instagram and TikTok expanding from purely peer-to-peer social activity to shopping. The two go hand in hand as social components breed virality for merchants.
Meanwhile, shoppability is a corollary to social commerce in that all things are becoming transactional. Product discovery on social channels is one thing (e.g., fashion items in your Instagram feed). Shoppability kicks in when it’s not just about exposure and impressions but transactions.
This involves the above players increasingly infusing shoppable functionality throughout their feeds. Multimedia is increasingly tagged so users can go from discovery to check-out in just a few taps, and without leaving the app. This has helped social apps boost monetization and attract merchants.
But it’s not all good news. TikTok has seen mixed results from its shoppability endeavors. And Instagram has pulled back on some of its efforts – part of an overall UX reshuffling underway. This all suggests its early days, so expect lots more experimentation for shopping features in your social feeds.
