For TikTok, the ambitious move into e-commerce has faced many hurdles in Western markets, and yet, the company has refused to back down. Years after trying to build up a shopping empire mirroring its Chinese counterpart, Douyin, TikTok has entered another round of layoffs in its U.S. shopping division. Its aggressive U.S. eCommerce targets have not been met, even as sales rose, causing the platform to retreat on strategy and downsize in the past few months. And yet, stakes, while affected, remain extremely high. ByteDance is still committed to expanding its shopping tools worldwide, believing that Western markets will one day equally carry with the boom in online sales culture in Asia. And these recent layoffs point toward growing pains that TikTok faces as it tries to move away from an airwave entertainer into a shopping haven.
TikTok Shop Struggles in the West While Douyin Dominates in China
In contrast, live-stream shopping is driving Douyin to massive success, with a staggering $490 billion estimated GMV in 2024. This represents a massive 30% increase from the previous year and was fueled primarily by China’s insatiable thirst for live-stream product sales. Meanwhile, U.S. operations by TikTok pulled in around $30 billion in GMV for 2024, which, while shockingly higher than that of 2023, was still below the high expectations of the company. In any case, ByteDance has yet to witness the explosive rise in Western markets from attempts to duplicate the success of Douyin. Yet the company is aggressively pushing the growth of its Shop features while hoping for a cultural impetus that will push in-app shopping in the U.S. and Europe, where traditionally there has been some resistance toward direct buying on social platforms.
Japan’s Entry into TikTok Shop Signals Continued Global Push
In any case, TikTok continues to roll out its shopping feature all across the globe, and Japan is now the 17th region to launch TikTok Shop. With this launch, Japanese users are expected to embrace in-app shopping tools with more open arms than their Western peers. Asian consumers have been a little bit more open to platforms that combine entertainment and shopping, unlike Western consumers. After all, Western culture is inclined toward having a dedicated platform for a particular need- Amazon for shopping, Instagram or Facebook for social networking, and TikTok for videos. This creates a rather peculiar challenge for TikTok, which is either going to have to resist this culture or think of a new way to have users spend inside its app.
