TikTok quietly launching and expanding its native marketplace!
With TikTok now boasting more than 1 billion active monthly users, brands have been flocking to the app to capitalize on it. As of now, mostly brands rely on TikTok influencers and in-house TikTok videos to bring brand awareness and hopefully convert and retain customers. While this has helped brands reach out to a vast number of customers with relatively low to zero cost, the fact that, as of now, prospective consumers have to separately go to the brand’s own digital marketplace means that consumers do not get the same level of convenience that they get from native marketplaces like that of Facebook and Youtube marketplace. Ergo, TikTok has been quietly rolling out its own native marketplace to mitigate these issues.
TikTok Shop
With Tiktok pushing to make its app a shopping destination by collaborating with brands, the app has been testing its own marketplace service where consumers can buy goods directly from the brands. TikTok began testing its shopping marketplace in the US from this past November. While this is still in the testing phase TikTok has already onboarded famous brands like PacSun, Revolve, Willow Boutique and KimChi Chic.
Traditionally, TikTok users have been able to buy products through its app for quite some time now. However, buyers are routed to an in-app browser to make their purchase. With TikTok Shop now, much like how Instagram Shop works , users will be able to checkout their shopping directly within the app. This will make purchases seem smooth and seamless.
TikTok to further challenge tech companies like Facebook and Instagram through its shopping features
TikTok has been a headache for social media companies like Instagram, Facebook and Youtube for quite some time now. While other social media companies have had to scale down their services in addition to massive layoff of their employees, TikTok shows no sign of slowing down. Now with TikTok launching its own in-house shopping service soon, it remains to be seen what further detriment it brings to other social media services like Instagram and Facebook.
Summing up
While Facebook and Instagram have been scaling down their shopping features looking at the fact that they have not really picked up, TikTok seems to be on an opposite trend with its push towards becoming a shopping destination.
There is a popular saying ‘Tiktok made me buy it’, as the term itself has amassed over 7.4 billion views. In fact, this hashtag has been used more than 42.6 billion times. Ergo, it seems that in-app shopping feature will be popular amongst TikTok users. Additionally, this will help the brands track their sales with data more efficiently!
