Douyin, the Chinese sister app of TikTok, is reshaping the balance of the Chinese e-commerce market. In 2024, the short-form video and social commerce platform reportedly earned roughly 3.5 trillion RMB (483 billion USD) in GMV (gross merchandise value), reaching third place in market share, right after Tmall and Pinduoduo from PDD Holdings, with GMVs of 8 trillion RMB (1.10 trillion USD) and 5.2 trillion RMB (717 billion USD), respectively.
What pushed Douyin’s e-commerce division up last year is mostly smaller merchants and brand merchants, i.e. official brand accounts instead of retailers, as well as the development of the “shelf e-commerce” (货架电商, essentially conventional searchable online shops rather than “content e-commerce” like livestreams and clips.
According to official Douyin data, merchant-led livestreams made up 70% of all e-commerce livestreamers. “Shelf”, merchant-led livestream and influencer-led livestreams make up 40%, 30% and 30%, respectively, in terms of GMV. The number of brands starting merchant-led livestreaming sales on Douyin grew 113% year-on-year (YoY) in 2024. Douyin is planning to provide merchant-led streams with more resources in 2025, which is what competitors such as Taobao and Tmall Group and Pinduoduo have been doing since late last year as well.
Douyin is reportedly setting its GMV target of 2025 at 4.2 trillion RMB (570.22 billion USD). With top influencer streamers susceptible to controversies, merchant-led streaming and smaller streamers have become preferred replacements. On 6 March, the platform also announced its 9 measures to support small and medium merchants, such as algorithm changes and fee reductions. With Bilibili already seeing benefits brought by smaller streamers, it is interesting to see how Douyin’s strategy plays out.
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