TikTok Shop to discount ‘thousands’ of items during sales event

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Dive Brief:

Coinciding with other retail summer sale events, TikTok Shop is offering discounts on thousands of products in its Deals for You Days event in the U.S., the company announced Thursday.
The online marketplace will begin offering discounts on products like apparel, beauty, home decor and books on July 9. The platform will have exclusive discounts from brands like L’Oréal Paris, Maybelline New York and NYX Professional Makeup during the event, the company said.
TikTok tapped content creator and makeup artist Tati Westbrook to showcase her favorite beauty products in a livestream. Other brands and content creators like Benefit Cosmetics, Coola and Simplymandys will host live shopping events on the platform.

Dive Insight:

After launching in the U.S. last fall, TikTok Shop’s sales event joins brick-and-mortar retailers in piggybacking off of Amazon’s Prime Day sales event. This year, Amazon will host its Prime Day sale on July 16 and July 17. Target, Walmart, Nordstrom and Best Buy rolled out similar summer sales, but unlike Amazon’s Prime Day event, these major retailers’ events aren’t exclusive to subscribers.

Social platforms have become a go-to spot for product discovery, Forrester Principal Analyst Kelsey Chickering said in emailed comments. Fifty-seven percent of back-to-school shoppers found new products to buy on social media, according to a 2023 Forrester report. Over half (52%) of consumers bought products they saw on social media, but less than half (46%) purchased products directly from social media ads, Forrester found.

“Going head-to-head with Amazon’s Prime Day, TikTok once again breaks out of the social media silo, positioning themselves as an entertainment and commerce company — not a social network,” Chickering said in a statement. “Retailers who run back-to-back programs on TikTok and Amazon this summer should use this opportunity to test which commerce platform drives more efficient sales and also learn about any differences between buyers on each channel.”

TikTok’s focus on cosmetics discounts comes as consumers continue to buy beauty products online despite inflation. Between Jan. 1 and May 31, online cosmetics spending rose 8.8% year over year to $16.3 billion, according to an Adobe Analytics report.