Last month, I interviewed for a TikTok Southeast Asian E-Commerce position. Here is an analysis of the business.
The whole process of e-commerce includes user browsing and purchase, merchant cooperation, factory production and raw material procurement, warehouse management, logistics and transportation, consumer finance, etc.
The platform serves two roles: consumers and merchants.
Major E-commerce Platforms and TikTok Shop
Currently, the leading e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia are Shopee, Lazada, and Tokopedia. Among them, Shopee and Lazada have live-streaming shopping.
Compared with existing platforms, TikTok Shopping has competitive advantages on the demand side but is not the only leading company.
Competitive advantage is something that competitors cannot do. The advantage of TikTok e-commerce lies in the stage of user browsing and purchasing. By mining/stimulating user interests and matching goods, it can connect merchants to user groups more accurately, so that merchants’ costs decrease and conversions increase. The core is massive user data, data mining, and matching recommendation algorithms.
For users, merchants care about use value, that is, a more cost-effective sales channel for customer acquisition; consumers care about price and spirit value, saving time or taking advantage, or getting emotional satisfaction.
Personal Thoughts
- The positioning of TikTok’s Shopping is marketing and sales channels. The goal is to develop users’ shopping habit on TikTok through live streaming shop, and the mall system undertakes search and purchase needs. In the end, TikTok e-commerce has both live broadcast e-commerce and search malls, becoming the preferred platform for users when shopping.
- The milestones in the development of online shopping platforms can be seen from the proportion of brands. Development stage: unlicensed commodities -> brands are invited to settle in -> brands take the initiative to settle in.
- Each video can attach a link to sell related products, similar to Affiliate marketing.
- TikTok Analytics Platform，https://www.tichoo.com/index.html