For example, Douyin has succeeded as an all-in-one content and shopping app in China, but US consumers may not be ready for that. In a March 2021 survey by Ipsos, about a third (34%) of US adults said they don’t typically use social media for shopping inspiration, and 30% said they don’t know if they can trust social media product recommendations.

China’s premier short-form video social media apps Kuaishou and Douyin were slower to launch their livestreaming ecommerce services. However, both have invested substantial resources into building out this functionality, and the results are evident. As Kuaishou, Douyin, and WeChat embrace the livestreaming ecommerce format, the figures for livestreaming social commerce are beginning to boom.

Plus, TikTok’s Chinese counterpart, Douyin, has let users search for products since 2019, so it’s likely something similar could come to TikTok soon. As for in-app purchasing, for now, businesses will need to link users out to their Shopify pages to complete the checkout process. But Douyin, too, started off by linking out to Taobao stores before adding native checkout.

Its wild success has inspired local competitors, such as JD.com and ByteDance-owned Douyin, to launch shopping festivals of their own. These festivals are increasingly spreading beyond China’s borders.

The rest of the world is waking up to the potential of shoppable livestreams, but it’s old news to China’s short-form video players and ecommerce platforms. Short-video leaders Douyin (TikTok’s sister app) and Kuaishou (known outside of China as Kwai) have been expanding their social commerce operations, not just to sell products, but to provide services and other forms of content as well.

Other major players include short-video apps Kuaishou and Douyin (TikTok’s sister app), as well as the Pinterest-like Xiaohongshu. Most of these apps are social in nature, so it’s little surprise that D2C players there are highly dependent on social commerce selling, which we forecast will generate RMB 2.427 trillion ($351.65 billion) in China this year.

Led by platforms like Alibaba's Taobao, Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok), and Kuaishou, shoppable livestreaming is by some estimates already a multibillion-dollar industry.

About 44% of internet users in China used social networks like WeChat and Douyin (the sister app of TikTok) to purchase goods or services in 2020. That figure will surpass 50% by the end of 2024, as consumers and social media platforms alike reimagine online shopping. More like this:. Audio: What will the media world look like in 2030? Part 1: Digital ads, shopping, and banks.

The enormous popularity of Douyin in China may also help TikTok to grow in the region. Douyin is a video-sharing platform very similar to TikTok but designed for consumption within China. Like TikTok, Douyin is owned by ByteDance―and like TikTok elsewhere in the world, Douyin has grown rapidly among younger internet users.

Douyin is a video-sharing platform similar to TikTok but designed for consumption within China. Like TikTok, Douyin is owned by ByteDance―and like TikTok elsewhere in the world, Douyin has grown rapidly among younger internet users. We believe it will see user numbers leap by 24.3% in 2020—more than triple the growth rate we projected before the pandemic (7.3%).

Meanwhile, shopping on Douyin is much more central to the app, which features several different shopping options and ecommerce mini-programs built into the platform. The value of goods sold on Douyin tripled between 2019 and 2020 with retail sales of 500 billion yuan, or $72.44 billion USD. There are a few reasons TikTok is likely to follow Douyin over Facebook or Instagram.

Its wild success has inspired local competitors, such as JD.com and ByteDance-owned Douyin, to launch shopping festivals of their own. These festivals are increasingly spreading beyond China’s borders. In Southeast Asia, Lazada and Shopee—backed by Alibaba and Tencent, respectively—run monthly sales festivals on dates of the same formulation, such as Shopee’s 9.9 Super Shopping Day held September 9.

In the aftermath, apps like Douyin and Weibo have removed their celebrity rankings, and some fan groups have been dissolved. Going forward, authorization is needed to create such groups. Last month, video-on-demand (VOD) platform iQiyi stated that it will cancel all idol shows on its lineup for the next few years.

The luxury brand also created posts on other social platforms—including Douyin and Xiaohongshu (a cross between Instagram and Pinterest, also known as Little Red Book)—that linked to the miniprogram. Ultimately, Armani Beauty’s miniprogram generated 279% more in sales than it did at last year’s 618, Vogue Business reported.

Shoppable livestreams are also extremely popular on short-video apps Douyin and Kuaishou. Key product categories. Amid the rapid expansion of both the middle class and ecommerce in China, the beauty category reached new heights in 2020. Consumers in China spent $11.0 billion on beauty products online last year, with skincare making up the majority of those sales, per research firm The NPD Group.

In 2019, 94.5% of internet users in China will be social network users. That amounts to just 59.0% of the country’s population. This report covers the trends shaping the market, as well as our first-ever user forecast for the popular short-video platform Douyin and updated estimates for WeChat and Sina Weibo.

That leaves many tens of billions of digital ad dollars unspoken for, and it is highly likely that most of that spending went to Douyin and Kuaishou. In fact, Douyin is likely driving an outsize proportion of China’s new digital ad spending.

Douyin, TikTok’s equivalent in China, will grow 27.8% to 442.58 million users this year, which means that more than half of China’s internet users will use the short-form video app, according to eMarketer’s new estimates. Growth will slow to 7.3% in 2020 and continue to drop in the next few years.

eMarketer senior forecasting analyst Oscar Orozco breaks down our adoption estimates for Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, and reasons behind its popularity.

In terms of social, it’s Weibo and WeChat, as well as Little Red Book (also known as Red or Xiaohongshu) and Douyin, which is TikTok in the US. Bilibili is a video platform that’s making headway and garnering more traffic, and more appeal. When we look back at the luxury goods industry post-pandemic, what fundamental changes will we see in China—and, more broadly, around the world?