- TikTok became a leader in social shopping just months after launching its e-commerce feature, Shop.
- It tied with Instagram as a go-to shopping app for adult Gen Zers, per a Morning Consult report.
- TikTok spent heavily during the 2023 holiday season to court buyers and sellers.
TikTok's e-commerce platform, Shop, is catching up quickly to other social apps among Gen Z adults.
Despite only officially launching in the US in September, a new report from the intelligence firm Morning Consult found that TikTok Shop was tied with Instagram as the top social app where 18- to 23-year-olds said they'd made a purchase. YouTube was the third-most-popular app for purchases in that age group, followed by Facebook, Snapchat, and Pinterest.
TikTok fared less well with other age groups. For example, a greater share of millennials said they'd made a purchase on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram than on TikTok.
Morning Consult's analysis drew from two surveys it conducted in December of about 3,200 US teens and adults.
Among all respondents, millennial and Gen Z users aged 18 to 26 were the biggest buyers on TikTok Shop when compared to younger Gen Zers and Gen Xers. Most baby boomers surveyed said they'd made no purchases on TikTok Shop.
Share of respondents in each age group who said they'd made 0, 1, 2-5, or 6+ purchases on TikTok Shop:
Purchases | Gen Z (age 13-17) | Gen Z (age 18-26) | Millennials | Gen Xers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
0 | 75% | 61% | 63% | 85% |
1 | 13% | 16% | 10% | 5% |
2-5 | 6% | 16% | 18% | 4% |
6+ | 5% | 8% | 9% | 5% |
Source: Morning Consult
"Gen Z and millennials are high-volume shoppers and big spenders, especially in the kind of categories that tend to be promoted on social media, like apparel," Claire Tassin, a retail and e-commerce analyst who worked on the Morning Consult report, told Business Insider.
TikTok is doing a good job of hanging onto customers
Shoppers often make a purchase on TikTok Shop after they see a particularly compelling video on their feed.
However, despite the viral nature of TikTok's platform, shoppers are not just making one-off purchases. In Morning Consult's report, 18% of millennial respondents said they had made between two and five purchases on TikTok Shop, compared to the 10% of millennials who had made only one. Another 9% of the millennials surveyed said they had made over five purchases on the platform.
Gen Z respondents also said they made repeat buys on TikTok. Sixteen percent said they'd made one purchase, 16% reported between two and five, and 8% said they'd more than five.
TikTok's recommendation algorithm is designed to show users more of what they like, which could help drive repeat purchases. Of course, its repeat-customer numbers are dwarfed by the percentage of those surveyed who said they had made no purchases at all on TikTok Shop, which could be an opportunity for the platform.
Earnest Analytics, which tracks credit- and debit-card transactions, found similarly strong retention numbers for TikTok Shop in a report released earlier this year. Earnest found that about 27% of TikTok Shop customers came back to make another purchase within five months of their first buy. The platform outperformed other e-commerce sites, including Temu, Shein, and Etsy, on this measure, coming second only to Amazon.
Will TikTok's early momentum last?
TikTok's rapid rise among young shoppers didn't happen out of thin air. The company invested heavily last year in the rollout of its Shop platform, offering subsidies and promotions to sellers and discounts to buyers throughout the holiday season, which was when Morning Consult conducted its surveys.
TikTok's aggressive push into e-commerce arrived as other competitor platforms like Instagram have pulled back on some native-shopping features and have instead leaned into partnerships with outside platforms like Amazon.
The fact that many adults continue to make purchases on Instagram and Facebook even after those apps removed direct-commerce elements suggests that Meta's strategy may be paying off.
"TikTok is obviously very invested in Shop, and Meta has pulled back," Tassin said. "It speaks to the enduring power of Meta's shopping features, especially if you're being inclusive of things like influencer affiliate links."
