Why Does Walmart Want to Buy TikTok?

Smartphone users in China have taken, in a big way, to buying things while they watch people hawk the products — think QVC and late-night television infomercials reinvented for the mobile age. Chinese e-commerce platforms have for years been adding livestreaming to their apps, and video apps have been adding shopping functions. In all, $140 billion in merchandise could be sold in China this year via livestreaming, more than double last year’s amount, according to estimates by the research firm Bernstein.

The sheer size of the Chinese consumer market has created a vast field for retail experiments of other kinds as well. One of the country’s newest e-commerce giants, Pinduoduo, has turned internet shopping into something more like a surreal video game. For Pinduoduo’s fans, the process of stumbling across strange new products, at ludicrously low prices, is a big part of the experience. Actually receiving those products is almost secondary. Currently, nearly 570 million people use Pinduoduo’s app every month.

Douyin started out by allowing video creators to post links to their stores on China’s largest online bazaar, Alibaba’s Taobao platform. Eventually, it allowed users to set up storefronts within the Douyin app itself, and now it is more aggressively pushing creators to sell through those native stores instead of on outside sites.

For most Chinese consumers, Douyin is not about to replace Taobao and other full-fledged shopping sites entirely. The design of the app means the products that sell best are cheap impulse buys, said Fabian Bern, the head of Many, a marketing company that works with creators on Douyin and TikTok.

“You’re scrolling very quick through content,” Mr. Bern said, which means that few people on the app are going to buy, say, a pricey wristwatch. “You will think twice about it, then basically the video is gone already.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/technology/tiktok-walmart-ecommerce.html