Despite tariff chaos and rising grocery costs, consumers are more willing than ever to impulse-buy Swedish candy, embroidered sweatshirts and Korean skin care on TikTok — lifting the company to a category rivaling eBay.
In its third quarter alone, TikTok Shop sold $19 billion worth of merchandise globally, according to recent data from analytics firm EchoTik. That’s just slightly below the total for eBay — founded three decades ago — which posted $20.1 billion.
A combination of aggressive marketing and shifting consumer preferences has boosted TikTok Shop’s success, say analysts and researchers. Another factor was a lucky break for TikTok when Chinese e-commerce sites lost a shipping loophole that kept prices low.
And it’s not slowing down, especially in the U.S., where it started up two years ago after expanding abroad, said Juozas Kaziukenas, an independent e-commerce analyst. The company sold $4 to $4.5 billion worth of products here in its third quarter, the most among all countries and 125 percent quarter-over-quarter increase, according to EchoTik. (TikTok itself does not publicly release sales figures.)
Patrick Nommensen, head of TikTok Shop strategic initiatives in the Americas and E.U., said in a statement that the operation has more impact than “traditional online shopping or social commerce.”
“We created an experience where buyers genuinely want to shop, not because of who they follow, but because they’ve discovered products they truly connect with,” Nommensen said.
Kaziukenas, in an analyst note this month, projected that the company will top $15 billion worth of sales in the U.S. in 2025, “which is a lot considering the sales channel didn’t exist two years ago,” and there have been lingering questions about the app’s status in the United States.
“This shows the potential of social commerce when it’s part of a social network that is massive, and it also shows that clearly the ceiling is not reached,” Kaziukenas said in an interview. “It will only get bigger if more brands and more users get comfortable with it.”
TikTok Shop also has a live shopping feature that’s picking up some traction among U.S. users, although not as much as its parent company ByteDance expects, Kaziukenas said. Overall, the company is still struggling to translate the wildly popular experience of live shopping in Asia to the U.S.
According to a report from GlobalData in partnership with TikTok Shop, about 10 percent of consumers had purchased something from live stream in the 12 months ending in April.
Impulse buys with a side of narrative
When the company rolled out TikTok Shop in 2023 — in the run-up to the biggest shopping season of the year — it did a full-court press of its shopping content into users’ algorithms, a move meant to “kick-start the market,” Kaziukenas said. The company offered discounts of up to 60 percent off, with a second stackable code for another 20 percent off, all in an effort to draw in users.
The initial push has paid off: Shoppers over the 2024 Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend sales surged 165 percent year-over-year, Nommensen said. Sales on Black Friday alone reached $100 million, triple that of 2023. This year’s sales event started Nov. 12 and extend through Cyber Monday.
Despite initial outcry from users over the deluge of shoppable content, growth over the past year has been more organic, Kaziukenas said. A recent report from Morning Consult shows TikTok Shop is one of the fastest growing brands among all American consumers.
“That growth really corresponds and correlates with a time where we are seeing more consumers shop via social media apps on a regular basis,” said Bobby Blanchard, a senior director of audience development at Morning Consult.
The app has also radically shifted how consumers discover products. As opposed to shopping on Amazon, a more functional e-commerce site, buying on TikTok can be more serendipitous — a small “treat,” said Neil Saunders, a managing director at retail analytics firm GlobalData. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)
Unlike its social media counterparts, the TikTok algorithm seamlessly sprinkles in branded content or influencers’ #ad posts in between cat and dance videos.
“They are going on to be entertained … and then they’re discovering products or brands they didn’t know existed, and they’re buying it,” Saunders said.
Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers, in particular, are unbothered by the sponsored posts, said Babson College marketing professor Lauren Beitelspacher. When it comes to influencers, she said, the parasocial relationship allows them to believe that the “influencer wouldn’t associate themselves with a brand they didn’t agree with.”
Lucy Robertson, the global head of brand marketing at Buttermilk, an influencer agency, noted that the most effective TikTok Shop creators are those that “build narratives around their recommendations. You’re not just watching them show a product; you’re watching them use it, react to it and integrate it into their lifestyle.”
This is particularly true in the beauty category, where creators show followers how to apply contour or blush or how to apply their skin care at night. Beauty sales are up 120 percent in 2025 year-over-year, according to data provided by the company, with Korean beauty products alone surging 132 percent. In July through September, creator-driven beauty sales more than doubled year-over-year. And there are 3.3 billion views of videos with #skincareroutine, one of the most popular hashtags in the category.
Men are also getting hooked. In September, viewership of videos about fragrance — a category that continues to grow in part because of men’s purchases — was 60 percent male, company data showed.
Analysts say some of the sales uptick could also be attributed to the falling appeal of Temu and Shein among U.S. shoppers after the removal of the “de minimis” exemption that allowed imports worth less than $800 enter the country duty-free. Among top sellers on TikTok Shop are less recognizable brands making cheaper goods, Kaziukenas said.
“It happens to be super cheap,” he said, “and becomes a much better impulse buy.”
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