UK shopping on TikTok surges as social commerce gets pandemic boost - report

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
May 26, 2021

TikTok isn’t only a social media phenomenon, it’s also a key shopping destination in the UK with a new study showing that shopping on TikTok grew 553% during the pandemic. That was almost three times the growth of shopping on Instagram (189%) and Facebook (160%).

It’s part of a wider shift to social shopping that’s being seen and with recent reports that TikTok is testing an in-app shopping feature in Europe, the social platform’s potential for e-commerce is booming. 

Bazaarvoice’s Influenster community spoke to 3,272 UK consumers and found that there’s been a “significant increase in the influence social media has had on consumers’ shopping preferences in the last year”.

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Instagram is ahead in the social commerce game because of its visual focus, with 64% of consumers shopping from the platform in the last year, followed by Facebook (45%) and TikTok (24%). But TikTok saw the really big growth. However, second only to TikTok in terms of percentage growth, Pinterest has seen a 356% rise in shopping in the past 12 months.

The point here seems to be that regardless of individual growth rates, social commerce is a trend that can’t be ignored.

Some 79% of consumers are now more influenced to shop on social platforms than they were a year ago and that has blended with a trend that’s seeing e-commerce in general becoming increasingly social anyway. 

The number of those ‘always’ shopping from their smartphone rose by a significant 214% last year, while those who ‘always’ shop from social media specifically was up by 146%.

As many as 70% of consumers indicated that they’d used social media to shop for a new brand in the last year and perhaps even more significant, 49% opted for a new brand over their regular one due to social media.

Clearly, the discovery element of social media is a key driver, but the relevance of a product is also a top reason (for 47% of respondents) why consumers choose a new brand from social media. This is followed by a product’s benefits, features or ingredients (41%), the visual content produced by the brand (27%), and the price (27%).

The people the company spoke to divided down as Gen Z (18%), Gen Y (71%), Gen X (10%), and Baby Boomers (1%).