A recent research report has been published on TikTok’s evolving market and increasing efforts to encourage safe and secure purchasing on the platform, in other words, TikTok shop growth.

This project is currently in progress. While in-app purchasing on TikTok hasn’t caught on with Western users, in China, in-stream commerce is the primary revenue generator for the local version of the app, and TikTok aims to expand this model globally.

It is also experiencing some success, as shown in the report, but at a much slower pace compared to its performance in its country of origin.

According to TikTok: “TikTok Shop is defining a new shopping culture, one that’s rooted in discovery, and fosters connections among sellers, creators, and the TikTok community. Since 2021, TikTok Shop has expanded from Southeast Asia to the United Kingdom, and most recently, to the United States in 2023, growing a community of more than 15 million sellers around the world. This new shopping experience empowers people to discover and buy products from their favorite creators and brands while providing brands, sellers, and creators the tools to sell products directly on the TikTok app.”

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TikTok Shop Improvements:

The report investigates the evolution of TikTok Shops alongside the platform’s evolving security features and protection measures for intellectual property rights. Moreover, there are some steps TikTok has provided to improve their systems:

• We require all sellers to provide documentation to verify their identity, business type, and their eligibility to operate that business. We scrutinize these applications closely to comply with all applicable regulations.\
• Once a seller is approved, they are placed on probation for a period of time, meaning there is a period of time when merchants can learn the rules and be eased into their experience on the platform.
• TikTok Shop policies, applying to both sellers and creators, are actively enforced and the cur community can also report any content that they believe breaks our rules for review.

As claimed by TikTok, they took down an additional 133,000 products that were posted and also stopped 37 million products from being listed for violating company rules. Not only that but also TikTok states that it has implemented several measures to improve its systems.

TikTok has also banned over one million sellers and disabled eCommerce tools for over 500,000 creators due to policy violations. Also, it aims to build more trust in its shopping features and drive increased purchase activity within videos. Even now, it is unlikely that this is the primary reason why brands would hesitate to establish a presence in the app.

Related Article: How to Make Money on TikTok?

After the U.S. TikTok sell-off bill is passed, many are curious about the app’s future – will it be sold to a U.S. company or removed from the American market, as suggested by the Chinese Government?

I guess we’re all waiting to know what will happen to TikTok as many people are worried about the implications in the US.