Yaneek Page | Get ready for the social commerce wave

What is the best way for entrepreneurs and small businesses to sell more in 2025? The answer may be to invest heavily in social media to drive social commerce, which has taken hold across Asia and appears to be the new frontier in the Western world.

If you have not heard it before, you read it here first: we are entering yet another significant era of business. I can’t help but feel that I have said this so many times before, however, the pace of change is so rapid, particularly in the last few years, that it is hard to keep up. At the same time, if we do not, we will surely be left behind.

Pundits and analysts estimate that growth in social commerce will surpass trillions of dollars by 2028. Based on the current trajectory, I would agree.

Social commerce is the seamless fusion of social media and e-commerce, allowing users to discover, research, and purchase products without ever leaving their favourite social media network. Emphasis on seamless. It also leverages the social connections among users in unprecedented ways. Let me explain with two examples:

1. I can post a video of myself on social media wearing a pair of sneakers and add a product purchase link within my post. Another social media user scrolling by can see my post, click the link to my sneakers, and buy it without going to another site.

2. I can visit a supermarket or store and see a case of juice, which happens to be on sale online. I can take a picture of that case of juice with the price then make a post to my followers, letting them know that the same item is available cheaper online. I can then include an affiliate product link with the sale price, allowing me to earn commission from any sales generated from my post. Again, social media users can purchase directly from my post by simply clicking the side button on their phones as if making a payment from the app store.

What makes this new and exciting is the integration of e-commerce with everyday social media scrolling. The secret sauce is leveraging social influence by incentivising users to actively promote products in exchange for affiliate commissions. It is, basically, turning social media users into your extended sales and promotional team.

Apps as storefronts

The social media app has become your extended storefront, customer support, talent recruitment, booking agency, payroll and logistics team and more. The apps are now extending offers to users to join promotional campaigns by posting videos with product links and generating sales. They then take care of order processing, accounting, and payments to participants, deduct their fees and remit the balance to the businesses.

This is a completely new way of doing business that is cashing in on humanity’s obsession with, and in some cases, addiction to social media. Entrepreneurs and small businesses have to take note because they can either maximise the opportunity, or get eaten by competition with vision and a strong propensity for action.

The biggest winners are social media platforms like TikTok, which are leveraging their popularity to drive commerce. As of May 2024, TikTok has more than one billion active users, with 150 million from the United States alone. Average daily time spent on TikTok more than doubled from 2019 to now.

Social media users are locked into their scrolling habits, and the average TikTok user spends an estimated 15 per cent of their day scrolling. In September 2023, TikTok introduced social commerce in the US and the United Kingdom with TikTok Shop. It is currently not available in the Caribbean. The only other countries that have access are Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

TikTok has been tight-lipped about their expansion geography and sales figures for 2024, however, the company has announced that it anticipates that the US social commerce will exceed US$17 billion before 2025. In August, they signed a deal with Amazon to allow users to buy products from the site without leaving the TikTok app.

Similarly, YouTube has partnered with another heavy weight e-commerce site: Shopify.

And Walmart launched a partnership with Roblox, one of the most popular online games in the world, in its bid to generate brand loyalty and familiarity with Generation Z.

Roblox has nearly 79.5 million average daily active users, 58 per cent of whom are 13 and older. The partnership allows a Roblox player to guide their virtual avatar into a virtual store at Walmart Discovered, click an item, like a bottle of soda, and buy it with Robux, which is the virtual currency used in Roblox. This virtual purchase would result in a real-world purchase in which Walmart delivers the physical bottle of soda to the Roblox player.

GenZ purchase intent

The younger generation prefers to shop online. At least half of all shoppers on TikTok are under 30 years old, with high-purchase intent and their penchant for impulse buying. Another fascinating trend is that although many purchases appear to be made on impulse, most users are satisfied with their purchases. Some 81.3 per cent of new purchases in the app are being made by existing customers, up from 64 per cent in November 2023.

At the start of this year, TikTok had registered more than 500,000 sellers on its platform and has been introducing new campaigns daily to ramp up commerce on its platform in one of the most aggressive expansions ever seen in the social media space.

Whether you are selling food, beverage, supplements, fashion and beauty products, household items, or artisan crafts and more, this is an exciting time. Integrating social commerce into your business model should be in your 2025 strategic plans. It may be the key to unlocking new markets and boosting your bottom line. As history has shown, the earliest adopters are the visionaries who will be best poised for success.

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Yaneek Page is the programme lead for Market Entry USA, and a certified trainer in entrepreneurship.yaneek.page@gmail.com