TikTok’s bet on social commerce is paying off

The news: TikTok Shop drove $100 million in Black Friday sales, three times more than in 2023, the company said last week. Shoppers were up 165% YoY. Posts with the hashtags #tiktokshopblackfriday and #tiktokshopcybermonday racked up over 4 billion and 3.5 billion views, respectively.

Zoom out: The Black Friday sales surge suggests consumer spending will remain resilient throughout the holiday season, but it also represents a major step for TikTok’s efforts to get US users interested in social commerce features.

• There is a massive gap between social commerce adoption in Asia and in the US. Retail social commerce sales in China will total $899.57 billion this year, compared to $71.62 billion in the US, per our forecasts. Douyin, the ByteDance-owned sister app to TikTok, drove $500 billion in social commerce sales in 2023. TikTok, meanwhile, fell short of $4 billion.
• The Black Friday sales figure and increase in shoppers show that TikTok is making inroads with US consumers and getting them more comfortable with shopping in the app.
• Consumers report low trust in social commerce, reflecting their unfamiliarity with making purchases via social media. Seventy-six percent of respondents in an October Aftership survey said they use social commerce for product discovery, but make purchases on retailer websites.

Our take: TikTok’s promising Cyber Five results show the platform steadily getting users comfortable with social commerce. One-third of its sales went to small and midsize businesses, which could encourage others to follow suit and leverage the platform’s popularity.

However, its recent unsuccessful attempt to avert the US ban throws its future into question. If TikTok is forced to sell to a US company by January 19, it’s uncertain what role social commerce will play in its future.