Social commerce is changing the way consumers discover, evaluate and purchase products by bringing commerce directly into social and content-driven experiences. Instead of moving from a social platform to a separate online store, shoppers can increasingly discover products through videos, creators, recommendations, reviews and communities, then complete or initiate the purchase within the same digital environment.
According to Expert Market Research, the global social commerce market was valued at approximately USD 1,490.12 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 12,004.06 billion by 2035, expanding at a 23.20% CAGR between 2026 and 2035. The underlying market dynamics are broader than any single platform. Social commerce combines creator influence, user-generated content, live video, peer-to-peer selling, social storefronts, group buying and increasingly sophisticated payment and fulfilment infrastructure.
Published market estimates can vary substantially because researchers use different definitions and inclusions. These differences should be considered when comparing forecasts, but the broader trend is clear: social platforms are becoming increasingly important commercial discovery and transaction environments.
Major Growth Drivers Transforming Social Commerce
Social commerce is growing because it combines product discovery with social interaction, reducing the distance between seeing a product and deciding to buy it. The strongest growth drivers include mobile usage, creator-led recommendations, short-form video, livestreaming, personalised content and increasingly seamless checkout experiences.
Traditional e-commerce generally begins with an intentional shopping action: a consumer visits a marketplace, searches for a product and compares available options. Social commerce reverses that sequence. A consumer may initially be watching entertainment, following a creator or participating in a community when a product becomes part of the experience.
This distinction matters commercially. Social platforms have extensive behavioural signals that can help determine which products, creators and formats are relevant to particular users. When those signals are combined with shopping functionality, platforms can turn discovery into a measurable commercial journey.
Creator-led commerce is particularly influential because creators can demonstrate products in realistic settings rather than relying solely on conventional advertising. Beauty products can be demonstrated through tutorials, clothing can be shown through styling videos, and consumer electronics can be evaluated through demonstrations or reviews.
TikTok’s experience illustrates the model. The company reported in June 2025 that TikTok Shop sellers in the United States had expanded into more than 750 categories and offered more than 70 million products. It also reported that U.S. TikTok Shop sales had increased 120% year over year during the comparable period in 2025. These are company-reported figures, but they demonstrate the scale at which social platforms are developing commerce ecosystems.
Changing Consumer Discovery and Purchase Behaviour
Consumers are increasingly discovering products through content rather than relying exclusively on traditional search or marketplace browsing. Social commerce therefore makes inspiration, evaluation and purchasing part of a single connected journey.
The shift is particularly visible among digitally engaged younger consumers, although social commerce is not limited to younger demographics. A 2025 global survey of 25,563 online shoppers found that Facebook was the platform respondents were most likely to use for online purchases, at 18%, while Instagram and TikTok each recorded 17%.
The commercial implication is significant: brands are no longer competing only for search visibility or marketplace ranking. They are competing for attention within entertainment and community environments where the product itself may be only one element of the experience.
Social Commerce Market Segmentation and Product Landscape
The social commerce market encompasses B2C, B2B and C2C models, while its product landscape ranges from apparel and beauty products to food, home goods, accessories and health-related products. Different social-commerce formats serve different purchasing motivations, from impulse discovery to community-driven comparison and peer-to-peer commerce.
Business-to-consumer commerce is the most recognisable model. Brands and retailers use social platforms to showcase products, work with creators, communicate with customers and facilitate transactions. Fashion, beauty, accessories and lifestyle products are particularly compatible with visual content because the value proposition can often be demonstrated quickly.
Consumer-to-consumer commerce follows a different path. Resale platforms and social marketplaces allow individuals to sell directly to other consumers, often using community trust, seller profiles, ratings and social discovery to reduce uncertainty. Poshmark and Etsy illustrate how social interaction and marketplace mechanics can overlap.
Business-to-business social commerce is smaller and more specialised but increasingly relevant. Professional communities, messaging platforms and social networks can support product discovery, relationship development and lead generation for business buyers. In sectors with complex purchasing processes, social platforms may influence the early stages of the buying journey even when the final transaction occurs elsewhere.
Product categories also reflect changing consumer behaviour. Apparel and accessories remain naturally suited to social discovery because visual presentation is central to purchase decisions. Beauty and personal care products benefit from demonstrations and creator tutorials, while home products can gain traction through before-and-after content, interior inspiration and practical demonstrations.
Food and beverages, health supplements and other consumer products can also benefit from creator recommendations and community engagement, although these categories require greater attention to advertising standards, product claims and consumer trust.
Emerging Social Commerce Formats and Selling Models
Social network-led commerce, social reselling, video commerce, product-review platforms and group buying represent distinct approaches to turning social interaction into commercial activity. Their common feature is that community, content or social influence plays a meaningful role in the purchasing decision.
Video commerce has become one of the most visible formats. Short-form videos can introduce a product rapidly, while livestreams allow sellers and creators to demonstrate products, answer questions and respond to consumer objections in real time.
TikTok describes this model as “discovery e-commerce,” where shoppers encounter products naturally while consuming content. The company reported that U.S. sellers and creators hosted more than eight million hours of LIVE shopping sessions during 2024, while its research with GlobalData found that 76% of consumers who engaged with TikTok Shop had purchased something from a livestream during the preceding year.
Social reselling adds another layer by combining commerce with personal networks and community trust. Individual sellers can recommend products, manage storefronts or resell goods without building a conventional retail operation from scratch. This model has been particularly important in markets where mobile commerce and social messaging are deeply embedded in everyday transactions.
Group buying works differently. Instead of relying primarily on an individual influencer, it uses collective purchasing behaviour to create price incentives or encourage participation. China’s social-commerce ecosystem has demonstrated the potential of this approach, with companies such as Pinduoduo building commerce around social interaction and shared purchasing.
Product-review platforms occupy an important position between content and commerce. Reviews reduce uncertainty by providing demonstrations, comparisons and experiences from other consumers. This makes authenticity increasingly valuable, particularly for products where consumers cannot easily assess quality from photographs alone.
Regional Trends and Market Opportunities
Asia Pacific is the most developed social-commerce region in many market assessments, while North America and Europe are building increasingly sophisticated creator-led and platform-based commerce ecosystems. Latin America and the Middle East and Africa offer additional opportunities as mobile internet, digital payments and social-media adoption expand.
Asia Pacific’s position is closely connected to China’s mature social-commerce ecosystem. Livestreaming, influencer selling, group purchasing and super-app environments have developed at substantial scale, providing a model that other markets have adapted in different ways.
India is another important market. Its combination of a large mobile-first consumer population, social-media engagement, digital payments and a substantial base of small sellers creates favourable conditions for social commerce. Meesho, for example, has developed a large-scale social-reselling model aimed particularly at enabling smaller businesses and individual entrepreneurs to participate in digital commerce.
North America has taken a somewhat different route, with major platforms integrating shopping into creator content, advertising and brand communities. However, the commercial infrastructure continues to evolve. Shopify reported that, as of September 2025, Meta had eliminated in-app checkout through Facebook and Instagram, meaning consumers could still browse products through shops but were directed to merchants’ websites for checkout.
This illustrates an important point about social commerce: the definition is fluid. Some platforms own the entire transaction, while others primarily own discovery and referral. For merchants, both models can be commercially valuable if the platform generates qualified traffic and measurable conversions.
Europe has significant potential because of high internet and social-network penetration, although regulation, privacy requirements and differences in consumer behaviour between countries can make market expansion more complex.
Latin America is benefiting from expanding digital commerce and highly engaged social-media communities, while markets across the Middle East and Africa offer longer-term opportunities associated with smartphone adoption, digital payments and the growth of digitally native businesses.
Technology and AI Reshaping Social Commerce
Artificial intelligence, recommendation systems, automated content creation, conversational tools and increasingly sophisticated analytics are making social commerce more personalised and scalable. The technology is moving social selling from simple product links toward experiences tailored to individual users and moments.
Recommendation engines are fundamental to this transformation. Instead of waiting for a consumer to search for a product, platforms can predict which content and products are likely to generate interest and place them within personalised feeds.
AI can also help merchants produce product descriptions, advertising creatives, video variations and customer-service responses. For smaller businesses, this can reduce the cost of creating the large volume of content required to compete on social platforms.
Visual search and image recognition provide another potential growth area. A consumer can encounter an item in a photograph or video and use technology to identify similar products. Pinterest, for example, positions its platform around discovery and shopping, reporting 640 million monthly active users and noting that 96% of its top searches are unbranded.
Conversational commerce is similarly important. Messaging tools can allow customers to ask questions, obtain recommendations and receive assistance before purchasing. For high-consideration products, this can help bridge the gap between automated discovery and human-style interaction.
Yet AI also introduces risks. Poorly generated product information, misleading synthetic content, inaccurate recommendations and weak disclosure around sponsored or AI-generated material can undermine consumer trust. Businesses therefore need governance and human oversight alongside automation.
Challenges Affecting Social Commerce Adoption
Trust, product quality, fulfilment, returns, platform dependence, data privacy and regulatory compliance remain major challenges. Social commerce can reduce friction at the discovery stage, but it does not eliminate the operational requirements of delivering a satisfactory retail experience.
Trust is especially important because social commerce often operates in environments where entertainment and advertising are closely intertwined. Consumers need to distinguish genuine recommendations from paid promotions, affiliate relationships and sponsored content.
Fulfilment can also determine whether a successful social campaign translates into sustainable customer relationships. A viral product may generate a sudden surge in orders, but inadequate inventory, slow delivery or inconsistent quality can quickly create negative reviews.
Consumer concerns are already visible in survey research. A 2025 Statista survey of 12,000 consumers who had purchased through social media found that prolonged delivery times and receiving products that differed substantially from what was ordered were among the principal concerns.
Platform dependence creates another strategic challenge. Brands that build their entire customer-acquisition strategy around one social network are exposed to changes in algorithms, fees, policies, audience behaviour and commerce functionality. The evolution of Meta’s checkout approach demonstrates how quickly platform strategy can change.
Regulation will also remain important. Advertising disclosures, consumer protection, privacy, payment security and product claims can become more complicated when creators, merchants, platforms and consumers participate in the same transaction ecosystem.
Competitive Landscape and Leading Market Participants
Competition spans social-media platforms, specialist marketplaces, social-reselling companies and technology providers, with differentiation increasingly based on audience scale, content discovery, creator ecosystems, payment infrastructure and seller tools.
The companies identified in the market landscape include Etsy Inc., Fashnear Technologies Private Limited (Meesho), Pinterest, Inc., Meta Platforms, Inc., Poshmark, Pinduoduo Inc., Roposo, TikTok (Douyin), Twitter, Inc. and Snap, Inc., alongside other participants.
Meta has a particularly broad position because its ecosystem connects social networking, advertising, creators and commerce across Facebook and Instagram. Pinterest occupies a more discovery-oriented position, where users frequently search for ideas and products rather than simply consuming a conventional social feed.
TikTok has built its proposition around entertainment-led discovery and creator-driven shopping. Its expansion of TikTok Shop into additional markets demonstrates the company’s ambition to connect content, sellers and transactions across geographies.
Pinduoduo demonstrates another competitive model based on social interaction and collective purchasing, while Meesho has focused heavily on social reselling and enabling smaller merchants in India.
The competitive landscape is consequently fragmented rather than dominated by one universal model. A platform that performs strongly for beauty livestreams may not have the same strengths for peer-to-peer resale or high-value B2B products. Merchants increasingly need to match the commerce format with the behaviour of their target customers.
Social Commerce Market Outlook Through 2035
Social commerce is likely to become an increasingly important layer of digital retail as consumers continue to blend entertainment, discovery, recommendations and shopping on the same platforms. The market’s future will depend not only on transaction volume but also on the quality of the customer experience and the ability to build lasting trust.
Under the Expert Market Research forecast provided for this analysis, the market is expected to rise from approximately USD 1,490.12 billion in 2025 to USD 12,004.06 billion by 2035, representing a 23.20% CAGR during 2026–2035.
Because alternative research methodologies produce materially different market totals, the forecast is best interpreted as an indicator of strong structural growth rather than as a universally accepted single market-size figure.
The most important development is that social commerce is becoming less about adding a “buy” button to social content and more about redesigning the entire customer journey. Discovery, entertainment, education, recommendations, customer service and purchasing are increasingly interconnected.
For brands, success will depend on producing content that is genuinely useful or entertaining rather than treating every social interaction as an advertisement. For platforms, the challenge will be balancing monetisation with user trust. For consumers, social commerce will continue to offer convenience while making transparency, product quality and reliable fulfilment increasingly important.
Conclusion: Social Commerce as the Next Layer of Digital Retail
The social commerce market represents a fundamental change in how commerce happens online. Instead of separating entertainment, social interaction, product discovery and purchasing into different destinations, social commerce increasingly brings these activities together.
Its growth is being supported by creator economies, short-form video, livestreaming, personalised recommendations, digital payments and increasingly sophisticated commerce infrastructure. At the same time, challenges around trust, fulfilment, privacy, regulation and platform dependence will determine how sustainably the sector develops.
The opportunity is particularly significant for businesses that understand social commerce as more than another sales channel. The strongest strategies connect useful content with genuine community engagement, appropriate products, reliable fulfilment and transparent customer relationships. As these capabilities mature, social commerce is positioned to become an increasingly important component of the global digital retail ecosystem through 2035.
