The Adaptation of Social Media Marketing Activities in S-Commerce: TikTok Shop

Abstract

The growing number of digital platforms nowadays has made the competition to gain users’ attention a challenging task for businesses. Clutter in advertising and sponsored brand posts have made the task even harder as consumers repel to avoid that clutter daily. In contrast with the past, consumers use social media to fulfill certain needs when they are aware of the needs such as hedonic needs, cognitive needs, and social needs. This is why the existence of social media marketing activities known as entertainment, interactivity, and electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) is crucial in the marketing planning of a business. Guided by a unique, diversified and preferences-tailored algorithm, TikTok social media app is showing significant growth over the few years since the year of its commencement in comparison to its competitors of social media providers like Facebook and Instagram. The short video app has included a new business model of social commerce called TikTok Shop to promote continuous use providing more than just entertainment. Therefore, to fulfill the objective of this paper in exploring the SMMAs impact on the s-commerce of TikTok Shop, secondary data was employed. The analysis concludes that social media marketing activities or also known as SMMAs in the newly added feature of TikTok Shop have a significant impact in influencing its users. The significant difference between traditional e-commerce and s-commerce was also highlighted to further outline the bright sides of s-commerce.