The company has been testing out a live shopping feature in several European countries since last year. There would be live events where people could buy products from their favorite brands. The brand would enlist popular TikTokers and popular brands for live streams. The point of them would be to entice people to buy a whole bunch of products. This model proved to be a smash hit in the Asian market, and TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, thought that the same model would apply to other markets.
However, live shopping on TikTok is not working in other markets
It’s, ostensibly, a recipe for success: advertize popular brands using popular influencers on a popular platform. But, it seems like TikTok live shopping is anything popular. According to The Financial Times (via The Verge), the live shopping events aren’t bringing in as many people as the company expected. Because of this, some of the popular influencers have also chosen to drop out of the venture altogether. We’re not sure about the conditions that influencers and brands agreed to for this, but you can bet that they all expected a sizable commission from this. However, if no one is buying the products, then you can expect that some people weren’t paid. That’s just speculation, of course. In any case, because this is not resonating with users in Europe and the States, the app is scaling back this whole venture in those markets. It doesn’t seem like the company is going to cancel the live shopping events on TikTok altogether. However, you can expect to see a lot less.
