Social commerce is a rapidly growing area of the US eCommerce segment that has found new success especially in light of the Covid pandemic.
According to eMarketer, social commerce penetration in China is predicted to reach $363.3 billion in 2021, up 35.5% from 2020.
Social commerce will account for 13.1% of total eCommerce sales in the country.
Meanwhile, sales from social networks in the US are projected to jump 4.3% to $36.1 billion in the US.
That’s a rather modest growth compared to China, but it still signals that the market is moving into this direction. However, it’s unlikely that the US will ever catch up to the same level, partially because technical development here has been very different.
“China’s unique,” said Turner Novak, a partner at venture capital firm Gelt VC. “In the US, we went from radio to TV to PCs to dumbphones to smartphones. Whereas in China, they went from not even having the internet to suddenly everyone has a smartphone in their pockets.”
Meanwhile, previous research by eMarketer showed that the majority of US customers are still using social media mostly for product discovery.
Yet, there’s a reason why Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook all have upped their game in stoppable features like live-streaming shopping and adding shopable ads.
