After testing the in-app shops with chosen brands in the US for the first time last year, TikTok is expanding its in-profile product display access for some retailers this week.
According to TikTok, it is now considering expanding its shop test, to be rolled out widely across all US retailers later on.
According to TikTok:

"TikTok Shop is your one-stop ecommerce solution for driving sales and brand growth on TikTok. With TikTok Shop, users are able to discover and purchase products from their favorite creators and brands in one seamless experience. With 83% of users saying that TikTok plays a role in their purchase decisions, it's more important than ever to make your brand and products discoverable to the fastest growing community in the world."

The TikTok first collaborated with few US businesses on shops in November last year. Its profiles then added a dedicated shop tab.
TikTok launched Shops in the UK in 2021. It launched shortly after Southeast Asia. And even as it continues to expand in-stream shopping functionality steadily, it hasn't been quite a massive hit for the app.

In-stream shopping has been a winner in China and is the core revenue stream for Douyin, the local version of TikTok. However, for reasons unknown, western audiences have not had that same bent towards in-app shopping and TikTok continues to flounder with different pushes it's done trying to increase shopping take-up.

Although it has started to see success in Indonesia, one of the growth markets for the app.

As Rest of World has reported

TikTok Shop reportedly racked up a gross merchandise value of $4.4 billion across Southeast Asia over 2022, powered by a network of agencies who 'manage' livestream presenters and shopfronts.

It's gained a lot of success among Asian markets, such as especially in China, but failed to make the same leap in the West; to that end, TikTok has toned down its efforts, instead scaling back a much broader shopping push to something more measured and slow release of in-profile product placement.

Will that eventually lead to greater take-up of in-stream shopping? It still seems unlikely, because while online shopping, in general, is expanding steadily over time, there remains a real resistance among shoppers to going all-in on the process.

Even after the pandemic, when online shopping reached record highs due to lockdowns, consumers didn’t stick with it, which doesn’t bode well for a broader shift anytime soon.

It seems that Western consumers are pretty set in their ways, and still, for the most part, prefer to walk the aisles and see the items they're buying. Which, as noted, is still gradually shifting toward more online purchases, but it's likely to remain a gradual progression, as opposed to people suddenly taking up more in-stream buying processes.

Scams, distrust of platforms with our data, threats to security – all these remain factors that have slowed broader adoption of live shopping.

TikTok may negate them, to some extent, but with TikTok itself under scrutiny over how it may or may not share data with the Chinese Government, it seems unlikely to be the platform that truly breaks through in this respect.