The "marriage" between Amazon and TikTok may usher in a new era of social e-commerce. It is learned that on August 8, Amazon announced that it had signed a cooperation agreement with TikTok, allowing TikTok users to purchase Amazon products directly without leaving TikTok . In this era of change and challenges, the cooperation between Amazon and TikTok, one is a veteran e-commerce giant and the other is a new social media top, is like a surging wave, impacting the e-commerce industry and causing heated discussions in the circle. It is learned that on August 8, TikTok also announced the news of its cooperation with Amazon. According to its official blog, the cooperation between the two will provide users with a seamless and fun shopping experience: TikTok users can purchase products from Amazon directly in the TikTok app without jumping to Amazon's app or website. The specific operation mode is as follows:- TikTok users will see Amazon’s featured products in the “For You” feed of TikTok’s personalized recommendation stream.
TikTok users can link their TikTok accounts to their Amazon accounts. After completing the account association setup, TikTok users can purchase Amazon products directly through "Amazon Product Ads" without leaving the TikTok application. Through account association settings, TikTok users will see real-time pricing, Prime exclusive offers, estimated delivery times, product details and other information of Amazon products through "Amazon Product Ads" on TikTok. Users can unlink their TikTok account from their Amazon account at any time in TikTok's app settings.
It is understood that this is not the first time Amazon has reached a cooperation with a social media platform. As early as November last year, Amazon established similar partnerships with Meta's Facebook, Instagram and Snap's Snapchat. The industry believes that the main reasons are the following two factors: On the one hand, the social e-commerce market has great growth potential. Data shows that social media is becoming the main platform for consumers to discover products. In the first six months of 2024, 55% of Generation Z shoppers purchased goods online while browsing social media. EcommerceBD data also shows that the scale of the social e-commerce market is expected to exceed the $6 trillion mark in 2030. On the other hand, in the face of increasingly fierce competition, in order to resist the strong traffic impact of emerging platforms such as Temu, Amazon chose to bet on social e-commerce and add new traffic entrances. As one of the social media with the strongest growth in recent years, TikTok has become an important choice for Amazon. The report data shows that TikTok has been listed as one of the world's top five most popular social applications, along with Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and WhatsApp. TikTok has the largest number of users in the United States, reaching nearly 150 million, of which young people aged 18-24 account for 36.7%. Based on feedback from the industry, this cooperation is more than just a simple functional upgrade, both from the platform and seller perspectives. Amazon, which lacks traffic, and TikTok, which lacks data, hit it off. From a platform perspective, the cooperation between Amazon and TikTok is a "win-win" deal. For Amazon, faced with the dilemma of slowing performance growth and external competitive pressure, TikTok's huge traffic pool can help it seize new traffic resources while consolidating its traditional traffic position. Data shows that as of April 2024, TikTok's global downloads have exceeded 4.92 billion times, with 1.582 billion monthly active users. By placing advertisements on TikTok, Amazon can display its products to more potential consumers. On the one hand, Amazon can provide TikTok users with a convenient shopping experience and reduce shopping "friction" through account association settings; on the other hand, TikTok's algorithm can also accurately locate target consumers for Amazon products and bring higher conversion rates to the products. For TikTok, after reaching a cooperation with Amazon, TikTok can not only make up for the shortcomings of its supply chain , but also have the opportunity to enhance the e-commerce capabilities of its platform : on the one hand, through account association settings, it can accurately locate e-commerce users on the platform; on the other hand, it can also take advantage of Amazon's richer products and higher platform trust to cultivate users' shopping habits on TikTok. At the same time, cooperation with Amazon, the US e-commerce giant, may also ease some of its regulatory pressure. But from the seller's perspective, the impact of Amazon's cooperation with TikTok is still unclear. Although many industry insiders believe that through this cooperation, Amazon and TikTok will provide users with a more seamless shopping experience and have the opportunity to promote sales growth for Amazon sellers, it is also good news for sellers. However, according to TikTok’s official blog, the cooperation is currently limited to Amazon’s first-party advertising on TikTok, and is not applicable to Amazon’s third-party merchants. Whether this function will be open to Amazon’s third-party sellers in the future is still unknown . For TikTok e-commerce sellers, after TikTok reaches a cooperation with Amazon, the "invasion" of Amazon products may also take away some traffic and profits . However, overall, the "marriage" between Amazon and TikTok has just entered the "honeymoon period". What the specific impact will be on the industry and sellers still needs to wait for further developments. What do you think about this? Welcome to discuss in the comment area~
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