Juozas Kaziukėnas, founder and CEO of retail data analytics firm Marketplace Pulse, said he has also noticed TikTok Shop listings appearing in Google’s Shopping tab recently. “Google remains the most popular search engine for shopping,” Kaziukėnas said, although some data suggests Amazon has overtaken the top spot, “And TikTok capturing some of that is not surprising.”
Kaziukėnas said the way products currently sell on TikTok Shop largely revolves around the content created on the platform to promote the products. “However, it’s not an alternative or replacement for search-based shopping,” Kaziukėnas said.
As a well-established search engine with a major advertising component, Kaziukėnas said Google Shopping results also allow people to compare similar styles, features and prices across retailers. “This is not TikTok’s strength,” he added. “TikTok Shop is for impulse buying when you are flipping through videos on the app, and one of them interests you enough for you to buy the product it is featuring.”
Still, Kaziukėnas doesn’t think TikTok Shop will rely on search-based shopping as a major customer acquisition channel, “and thus their ads on Google shopping are not going to be key drivers.”
“TikTok Shop is a shopping experience self-contained inside of the TikTok app and driven by content, rather than search,” he said.