TikTok Commerce and Social Shopping: Trends Redefining Online Retail

Abstract

This study examined the patterns, drivers, and competitive implications of TikTok commerce adoption among businesses in the United States and globally. Despite the documented benefits and growing availability of social commerce technologies, significant disparities exist in adoption rates and implementation success among businesses, creating a digital divide that threatens to exacerbate existing competitive inequalities. The research employed a comprehensive literature-based methodology, utilizing systematic review approaches to synthesize diverse perspectives from academic literature, industry reports, and empirical studies. The findings reveal four significant patterns in TikTok commerce adoption that have profound implications for business competitiveness and retail transformation. Contrary to conventional wisdom about e-commerce diffusion, businesses implementing creator-driven marketing strategies demonstrate unexpected performance advantages, with 70% of TikTok Shop revenue generated through creator partnerships, challenging traditional direct-to-consumer marketing models. However, small businesses show lower sustained success rates at 43% compared to larger organizations at 78%, indicating that organizational resources and social commerce expertise remain crucial factors. Businesses successfully implementing TikTok commerce experience substantial performance improvements, with 75% reporting it as their highest-performing media channel, 73% seeing deeper brand connections, and average short-term ROI of 11.8 with additional long-term benefits. Companies utilizing comprehensive social commerce strategies achieve global gross merchandise value of $33.2 billion with 110% year-over-year growth, with top-performing regions reaching significant market penetration. Despite these promising outcomes, persistent barriers exist, including trust concerns affecting 41% of consumers and operational scalability challenges for 64% of businesses. The study concludes that TikTok commerce represents both a significant opportunity and fundamental challenge that will determine competitive positioning in the evolving retail landscape. Creator partnership management emerges as the most critical success factor, indicating that social commerce transformation is fundamentally about authentic relationship building rather than purely technological adoption. The research recommends establishing comprehensive social commerce literacy programs for business leaders and developing targeted support mechanisms to address implementation constraints, ensuring broader distribution of social commerce benefits across the business ecosystem.

Keywords: TikTok Commerce, Social Shopping, Creator Economy, Live Streaming, Mobile Commerce, Digital Transformation, Influencer Marketing, Entertainment Commerce