Despite the incredible success in recent months, even TikTok seems to have its problems. Apparently, in fact, the platform is downsizing its plans for the Live Shopping in Europe and the United States. The reason? The suboptimal results of the first tests.
Live Shopping: TikTok takes a step back from its plans for the future
At the end of last year TikTok tested Live Shopping in the UK, with a multi-brand event called “On Trend”. According to the Financial Times, however, live streams they did not attract a large audience, nor generated large product sales. And indeed, some creators initially involved in the TikTok Shop projects have decided to back off and abandon everything. The plans of the platform, however, were very different. TikTok wanted to launch Shop in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the United States by the end of the year. Yet now the App has made it known that it will focus exclusively on the United Kingdom.
Credits: TikTok
“The market is not ready yet – an employee told the Financial Times -. General awareness and consumer adoption are still low ”. On the other hand, it is undeniable that Live Shopping is a huge source of income for ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. But it would appear that the platform has not yet managed to find the right way to concentrate this revenue. Of course, it’s true that users are making more and more purchases through Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, but the idea of buying products during a live is something completely different. And so far, no platform seems to have found the right key to making this feature a source of income. Beyond this, it is clear that the Chinese App is making a great effort to be able to achieve the right success with Live Shopping.
“We are constantly looking for new solutions to enrich the experience of our community and we regularly test new features to inspire creativity and innovate the experience on TikTok in markets around the world,” reports a spokesperson. The brands on the platform have found a creative outlet to connect authentically with the public and we are excited to experience new opportunities in the commerce sector that allow our community to discover and interact with what they love “.