For several years, live shopping has been a major trend in China, with platforms such as Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, generating a significant portion of their revenue through in-app shopping. Western social platforms, however, such as Instagram and Facebook, have struggled to replicate this success and have since abandoned their live shopping push.
According to TechCrunch, Meta is abandoning its live shopping push on Instagram after withdrawing from Facebook live shopping in August 2022. Instagram users will no longer be able to tag products while live streaming beginning March 16, 2023. This decision demonstrates that live shopping has not taken off in the West as many had hoped.
In China, live-stream commerce is expected to generate nearly $400 billion by 2022, accounting for nearly half of all eCommerce spending in the US last year. This success can be attributed in large part to the popularity of live-stream spending among younger audiences, with users aged 27 and under experiencing the fastest adoption of this shopping trend.
Almost every app in the Western world, including Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram, has experimented with live-stream shopping. None of these platforms, however, have been able to replicate the success of their Chinese counterparts. Meta’s decision to discontinue its live shopping push on Instagram is unsurprising.
This decision could be problematic for TikTok, which makes the majority of its money from shopping in other regions. TikTok is working on a new Creator Fund and a new paywall option for video clips, but if live shopping does not catch on in the west, it will need to rethink its growth models significantly. The failure of live shopping to take off in the West highlights regional differences in consumer behavior.
