14 DAY TRIAL // TikTok is slowly but surely expanding beyond the social concept with investments in several key areas, including an in-app shopping feature.
After previously launching such capabilities in a series of countries including the United Kingdom and Indonesia, TikTok has now quietly started a test of the in-app shop in the United States as well.
By allowing customers to purchase products without leaving the app, TikTok hopes to generate more revenue, especially as large retailers join the platform. At this point, the company hopes to convince as many businesses as possible to bring their products to TikTok, especially as the timing aligns with the holiday season when online sales are expected to go up in the United States.
As reported by The Verge, TikTok has long been eyeing an expansion of this feature to the United States, with job ads posted on LinkedIn confirming that the company’s long-term focus has indeed become providing users with an e-commerce experience right within the app.
“The e-commerce industry has seen tremendous growth in recent years and has become a hotly contested space amongst leading Internet companies, and its future growth cannot be underestimated. With millions of loyal users globally, we believe TikTok is an ideal platform to deliver a brand new and better e-commerce experience to our users,” the company explains in one of the ads.
According to the listed responsibilities, new employees would have to “be responsible for the planning and solution design of fulfillment centres, including solutions for logistics and supply chain to achieve better performance of overall lead-time, cost, and service quality.”
At this point, the feature is slowly launching the U.S., but TikTok is obviously planning a global expansion in the coming months, most likely in the first months of the next year.