TikTok, the Chinese social media giant, is determined to step on Amazon’s toes. Not content with entertaining teenagers around the world, the group is focusing on e-commerce. It is now deploying logistics infrastructure to develop this strategy.
It was on LinkedIn that news website Axios discovered the TikTok project. Online, dozens of job postings for new Chinese chain supply chain. According to these records, the platform plans to open a global fulfillment center in Seattle, on Amazon soil.
“TikTok is the ideal platform to deliver a completely new and better e-commerce experience to our users. (…) By providing warehousing, shipping and customer service, our mission is to help sellers improve their operational capabilities and efficiency (…) and ensure the rapid and sustainable growth of TikTok Shop.” we can read in a professional social network.
Above all, the company wants to provide after-sales services and control transportation to subcontractors.
2021 Continuity
With this device, the social network reaffirms its interest in online commerce, which is the main lever of the application. According to a study by Accenture, by 2025 Internet shopping should bring in $1,200 billion, while the global market currently generates $492 billion.
As of 2021, TikTok is working with Shopify in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom to offer merchants the ability to integrate the link directly into their store. The social network also offers shopping options directly on the platform. A success in Asia, but still struggling to find an audience with Westerners.
In France, for example, only 3% of consumers bought from the platform in 2021, compared to Meta’s 20%.
Bets on Discovery Commerce
To attack Jeff Bezos’s business on its soil, TikTok is betting on Discovery commerce, or predicting what buyers want. At Amazon, a consumer goes to the site with the intent to buy. In the social network, the algorithm determines the user’s taste so that it can offer him products even before he realizes the need.
The application will also facilitate the shopping process. The consumer will buy with one click on the platform without being distracted from their initial purchase by advertisements from competing sites. But despite the Discovery trade, the challenge remains daunting to unseat Amazon, with 2.5 billion monthly visitors.
Source: Le Figaro
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.