U.S. Consumers Spending More on TikTok Shop Than Shein
TikTok Shop seems to be clicking with consumers.
U.S. consumers have become more enamored with the offerings on TikTok Shop than on fast-fashion platform Shein, according to a consumer trends report from Coefficient Capital and Dan Frommer of The New Consumer.
In Q3 2024, their spending on TikTok Shop has outpaced dollars being forked over to Shein, data from Earnest Analytics shows.
Among consumers who said they’ve purchased items from TikTok Shop, fashion and apparel are a favorite. Forty-five percent of those consumers have purchased clothing or accessories from the platform. That figure is followed closely by beauty and personal care, with 44 percent of TikTok Shop buyers noting they purchased an item from that category.
The average value of a TikTok Shop order came in at $35 between November 2023 and November 2024, with customers making an average of 5.3 transactions on the platform within that time period.
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Having repeat purchases can be a boon for platforms hawking low-cost goods, and TikTok Shop has made consumers want more. Nine in 10 consumers who have purchased from TikTok Shop said they would do so again in the future.
Already, nearly half of TikTok shoppers have re-bought an item that they initially purchased from TikTok Shop, and three in four consumers are repeating their purchase on the ByteDance-owned app. But half of those consumers are also repurchasing from Amazon, and 30 percent are repurchasing the same product from PDD Holdings’ Temu.
And as TikTok Shop supersedes Shein in many consumers’ minds, per the data, so has Temu. Data included in the report shows that as of October, indexed monthly spending among U.S. Shein shoppers had shifted; Temu and TikTok Shop were nearly at parity, and Shein led only by single-digit percentage points.
TikTok Shop’s path to growth has been swift since it launched last fall, but it has some serious roadblocks to overcome if it wants to see that growth continue. The company is in a race against time as the U.S. threatens to ban the video platform.
Experts have said it’s unlikely that TikTok actually sees a ban, but the clock is ticking away after a D.C. appeals court said it would not pause its ruling upholding the legality of the government’s law stipulating as much.
That leaves the China-owned platform with few options left and a short window to see any resolution from the Supreme Court. And, given that the ban would take effect on Jan. 19, the last day of the Biden-Harris administration, President-elect Donald Trump may not be able to save the platform, as some have proposed he might.
Even if TikTok finds a way to survive—through bureaucracy, divestiture or otherwise—it faces some pushback from consumers who have yet to purchase from TikTok Shop. Among those who said they have not purchased anything from the platform, over one-quarter say they don’t trust TikTok with their credit or debit card information. Just less than one-quarter also said they don’t trust the quality of the products, and 20 percent said they don’t trust the products’ authenticity.
Those types of issues, compounded with TikTok Shop’s regulatory issues, could be why, even as the market for low-cost, digitally native e-commerce platforms grows, consumers continue to turn to tried-and-true platforms like Amazon.
Though TikTok Shop has started to capture a considerable portion of the low-cost e-commerce space, consumers’ spend there is still minimal when stacked up against retail behemoths like Target, Walmart and Amazon, data shows.
More than eight in 10 Americans have a favorable perception of Amazon, and 72 percent of American consumers said they make an Amazon purchase at least once a month. Consumers indicated that they believe Amazon offers the best selection (73 percent), the best quality products (53 percent), a fun shopping experience (77 percent), trustworthy reviews (70 percent) and quick-turnaround delivery (84 percent).
Perhaps the most stark datapoint showing Amazon’s outsized importance in today’s e-commerce market is the fact that nearly half of consumers disagreed with the statement, “If Amazon disappeared tomorrow, I’d be fine.”
Though Amazon continues to be a market leader for consumers on goods of all kinds, it continues to iterate on its strategy. It recently launched Amazon Haul—a low-cost, direct-from-China platform embedded within its main app and site—most akin to Temu, which continues to grab consumers’ attention and spending. That, experts have said, may be a signal that low-price e-commerce is becoming a segment capturing such a large proportion of consumers that Amazon feels it’d be remiss to abandon the idea.
Given all the noise in the low-price space and TikTok’s potentially impending sanctions, 2025 is set to be a year to watch when it comes to consumers’ affinities and behaviors.
