Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) are trading 1.6% lower on Thursday, hitting their lowest monthly level. Apart from the broader market downturn, one of the speculated catalysts behind the decline is the potential rise of a challenger to its e-commerce business – ByteDance’s TikTok.
TikTok Seeking to Grow US E-Commerce Business to $17.5B in 2024: Report
Chinese social media giant TikTok is looking to expand its e-commerce operations in the US tenfold to a whopping $17.5 billion in 2024, a move that could challenge Amazon’s dominance in that market.
According to Bloomberg, TikTok has been holding internal discussions about its 2024 merchandise volume goal for the US version of TikTok Shop. Although the volume target may change depending on the performance of this segment, the company’s ambitions could pose a bigger threat not only to Amazon but also to fellow China-based retailers Shein and Temu, which have been becoming increasingly popular among American buyers.
In contrast to those two, TikTok plans to use its significant social media presence to attract shoppers.
ByteDance’s short-form video platform was headed toward $20 billion in global gross merchandise value (GMV), mainly driven by solid Southeast Asian demand. Now, the company is looking to grow sales in the US and Latin America, planning to roll out the e-commerce offering in the coming months, Bloomberg said, citing sources familiar with the matter.
TikTok said Bloomberg’s sales predictions were wrong.
“The speculated US merchandise sales figures represented by Bloomberg are inaccurate.”
– it said in a statement.
The e-commerce industry in the US is the second-biggest in the world, only behind China. According to Statista, the market’s revenue is expected to continuously grow between 2023 and 2028 to $614.2 billion, marking a 67.47% growth.
Amazon Stock Hits 1-Month Low
After an impressive performance in 2023, Amazon shares witnessed a notable decline this year. The stock fell again at the market open on January 4, bringing it to the lowest level in a month.
The tech giant is the leading e-commerce store in the US and the biggest one globally. The company captured 37.6% of the US e-commerce market in 2023, per Statista, far ahead of the second-best Walmart (NYSE:WMT), which captured 6.4% of the market.
Net sales from the company’s online stores amounted to $57.26 billion in Q3 2023, compared to $23.05 billion from its AWS cloud unit and $12.06 billion from advertising services.
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