TikTok, Amazon, and Shopify: The Interplay That Will Define The Next Five Years
The forces that shape eCommerce are ever-changing and are often based on the actions of the major platforms in the market.
Let's review TikTok, Amazon, and Shopify - and how their efforts affect each other.
TikTok is looking to train the next generation of eCommerce creators and influencers on its platform. And it's not making the same mistakes as other players in the past.
Who Needs The Other More? TikTok or Shopify?
If you play out the trends over the next 5 years, Shopify needs TikTok more than the other way around. For a few reasons:
TikTok already has the consumer's attention. Shopify is still in experimentation mode with Shop App and Shop Cash. Make no mistake, this is the target for these efforts.
TikTok is creating its own app and fulfillment ecosystem independent of Shopify, not content to rely on other parties.
TikTok understands it's the influencers that are the key to the whole game, and has built its own on-platform affiliate program to feed its flywheel.
TikTok is not repeating the same mistakes as Meta, and is instead appying the Douyin playbook to create events and discount incentives.
Who Needs The Other More? Amazon or Shopify?
To expand Prime off-Amazon, I've written many times that Amazon needs Shopify a great deal.
On Amazon itself, Amazon is under pressure from Walmart at the low-end of the market, "Prime saturation/fatigue" at the high end of the market, and product quality issues across the board.
To be clear, these are all "high-class" problems for Amazon who is not going anywhere for a while.
The primary reasons for these Amazon issues I feel are as follows:
Over-reliance of Amazon on third-parties.
Relative lack of listing and product quality enforcement.
Relative rise of fulfillment capabilities across the board (when Prime started, it was a miracle, now it's more normal).
To be clear, I think Amazon's primary problem is product and price-related, not fulfillment-related. That to me points to more first-party sales going forward.
Who Needs The Other More? Amazon or TikTok?
To continue to attract the next generation of consumer, it's possible Amazon could need TikTok more than the other way around. Indeed, even Amazon has published in the past about the success of its TikTok influencers.
I feel those gates are closing.
To expand Amazon to the next generation, it needs to understand how to get in front of them better.
Like Google's own social efforts, Amazon has not progressed beyond its Amazon affiliate program.
TikTok is looking to capitalized on its next-generation discovery and consideration advantage by closing off its purchases off-platform.
This means Amazon desperately needs its own scaled video property in order to compete for the next generation of consumer attention. The trends are working against it rather than for it.
