Embracing digital commerce may be retailers’ best bet for staying ahead of a fast-moving industry • TechCrunch

Myriad companies have made digitally driven commerce work for them, but others have struggled to find success or are unsure where to start.

Between livestreaming and big players like TikTok, Amazon and Twitter getting into e-commerce in the metaverse, social commerce is going to be a force to be reckoned with.

This market’s gross merchandise value in the U.S. is expected to be $99 billion by 2025, and it’s expected to grow 25% each year, according to GP Bullhound Global Insights’ Technology Predictions 2023 report. That is compared to China’s $1.02 trillion market, predicted to grow at 26% each year. Overall, the market is forecast to hit $3.8 trillion by 2030.

It’s also an area that we have followed intensely, especially since shopping was forced online at the beginning of the pandemic. And a lot of companies are doing compelling things.

Take Kahani, for example. Its founder, Jesse Pujji, told TechCrunch in October that the future of mobile e-commerce was going to look like TikTok, Instagram and Snap, and modeled Kahani’s first product to be a “Stories-like” feature so that brands could show their clothes being worn “live” versus static images of the front and back views.

Earlier this month, Amazon launched Inspire, a social media-inspired feature that provides a TikTok-like shopping experience with short-form videos and photo feeds.

Though the pandemic-induced online shopping frenzy has cooled as more people venture out again, with all of the different methods out there for digital commerce, driven in large part by livestreaming and social media, it’s time to take a look at where this industry is headed, who the dominant players will be, what the challenges to adoption are and what brands will have to do to keep up.