With searchability features and its frictionless retail nature, TikTok Shop offers brands an opportunity for quick exposure and customer acquisition. Brands are now using TikTok data to inform their innovation pipelines and understand emerging consumer trends. However, Frey also highlighted the challenges around building loyalty due to these quick, TikTok-influenced shopping behaviors on such a large platform.
“The amount of brands that can play in the space is really great,” Frey said. “That also means that the loyalty and disloyalty is great too.”
Challenges of regulating vast online platforms like TikTok also exist, particularly around issues like counterfeit products, misleading claims and fake reviews. Frey suggested that the industry take a more proactive approach to self-regulation to maintain consumer trust, as the FDA and FTC lack the resources to effectively monitor these rapidly evolving platforms.
“We’re seeing this challenge not just with TikTok, we’re seeing it with other online retailers and just retailers in general, and I think you’ve got a lot of challenges around dupes and counterfeits” Frey said.
“We really are seeing this more and more in the health and beauty space. You’re seeing challenges around claims that are being made. And frankly, there’s a lot of claims that are not being watched, and then I think the other piece that’s less on TikTok, but is on other platforms is the fake reviews.”
Looking ahead, she foresees an acceleration of personalized health and wellness content being delivered directly to consumers—all based on their online behavior.
“It’s already happening now,” she said. “If you think about the algorithms, we’re being fed certain things based on our likes and needs, and I think we’ll just continue to see this acceleration of personalization as it relates to health and wellness, coming directly to the consumer so they don’t even have to do even as much of the discovery that they’re doing today.”
