Abstract
TikTok has risen to become the world's most popular video-sharing social media platform. TikTok has a huge active user base and a higher growth rate compared to other platforms. In recent times, TikTok has been increasingly used for business purposes. But despite this, there is still a lack of empirical research on the role of TikTok in the retail sector which is widely used. Thus, by capturing retailers' viewpoints, this chapter is keen to study the influence of TikTok on the retail sector. The chapter, ultimately, found that there are still many retailers who are not using the application. While, those who have utilized TikTok merely used it as a complementary platform to the established ones. Nevertheless, TikTok utilized retailers to acknowledge the innovative features of and the benefits realized from TikTok. Thus, recommended action plans are also suggested so the retailers can maximize the potential of TikTok in their businesses.
TopLiterature Review
TikTok is a globally popular video-sharing application that enables users to create and share short-form videos on various topics (Hill, 2022). The application allows users to get creative with their content using filters, stickers, voiceovers, sound effects, and background music (Geyser, 2023a).
The journey of TikTok began when an application named Musical.ly was introduced in 2014 in Shanghai. Musical.ly, owned by a US company, primarily focused on lip-syncing content and had its niche in the area (Geyser, 2023a). In 2018, as part of its global expansion plan, the Chinese technology company ByteDance acquired Musical.ly and rebranded the company into TikTok (Tidy and Galer, 2020). In the Chinese market, ByteDance maintains TikTok as a separate application called Douyin, which is one of the most popular applications in the country (Geyser, 2023b).
Entertainment and dance continue to be the most popular types of videos on TikTok, but it has also evolved into an infotainment platform for users. Popular informational videos cover health, lifestyle, personal finance, and cooking. The foundation of this platform is user-generated content; the content on the network is created by the users themselves. TikTok's popularity has astonishingly increased since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, becoming the most downloaded mobile application (Geyser, 2023b; Bhandari & Bimo, 2022; Iqbal, 2023; Shepherd, 2022). According to Cloudflare Radar’s findings, TikTok has not only surpassed other social media platforms in terms of access traffic but has also notably beaten Google as the chosen search engine for Generation Z (Moreno, 2021).
TikTok for Business
In recent times, TikTok has emerged as a thriving business platform, where businesses utilize the app to promote and sell products, especially since the introduction of TikTok for Business and TikTok Shop in 2022. With a vast potential audience, TikTok provides significant opportunities for businesses to showcase their product offerings. The popularity and usage of TikTok have consistently grown since its inception, reaching 1.6 billion users in 2022, and anticipated to further increase to 1.8 billion users by 2023 (Iqbal, 2023). In 2023 so far, TikTok has achieved the highest average time spent by any social media user, averaging 55.8 minutes (Geyser, 2023b).
Key Terms in this Chapter
TikTok Business Account: A Business account that provides avenue for TikTok business users to become a business creator and marketer to sell their product online.
Social Media Marketing skills: The latest marketing capability of the business’s personnel who can utilized social media platforms to promote the business online and ultimately to contribute to business’s returns.
Business Live streaming: The tiktok feature that allows business users to stream live videos and get engage with their followers or prospects.
TikTok: The social media platform that allowed its users to make, share and watch recorded and live stream videos.
Hastage: it is words or phrases headed by the ‘#” symbol.
Complementary platform: An added-value platform to the established and primary one.
Multifaceted social media strategy: Deploying business strategies through a myriad of social media platforms.