Social commerce is no longer a trend to monitor. It is a structural shift that is reorganising purchasing journeys across Europe and forcing a deep transformation in marketing, sales and customer service teams. The European market is projected to grow from €25.8 billion to €44.8 billion by 2028 (eMarketer). TikTok Shop is leading this growth — and brands that delay their response are already losing ground.
This article, co-authored by Pedro Ferreira Alves, Country Manager Armatis Portugal, and Emmanuelle Kanga, Marketing Project Manager at Armatis, examines what this transformation concretely changes in your organisation, and the conditions required to stay ahead of it.
The numbers set the pace. According to Accenture, social commerce was projected to reach $1.2 trillion by 2025, growing three times faster than traditional e-commerce. In Europe, TikTok alone counts 200 million active users. Conversion rates on the platform can be up to four times higher than on a standard e-commerce site.
At the same time, traditional website traffic is declining. Contentsquare recorded a 3.3% drop in global e-commerce traffic in 2024, while Similarweb measured an 8% fall among France’s 339 largest e-commerce sites. Your customers are no longer waiting to land on your website before buying. They buy wherever they spend their time.
Launched at scale across Europe on 31 March 2025, TikTok Shop operates through three distinct mechanics. Discovery Commerce turns passive scrolling into an immediate purchase impulse: sales through shoppable videos increased fourteenfold in six months. Live Shopping now accounts for 16% of TikTok Shop’s total revenue, with 860 live sessions per day across Europe. And creator affiliation is the backbone of the model: between 84% and 95% of revenue in the best-performing shops comes from independent creators paid on commission.
This model inverts traditional commercial logic entirely. Previously, you hired salespeople, trained them, and managed them. Today, independent creators sell on your behalf, purely on a performance basis. The average best-selling product on TikTok Shop is promoted by 65 different creators. It is this repetition across dozens of authentic voices that builds trust and drives purchase decisions.
The strongest-performing categories are beauty (products priced below €20) and health and nutrition, where average revenue per shop is four times the platform average. The common formula: visual, accessible products carried by a wide range of creators. One strategic pitfall to avoid from the outset: do not over-script your creators. You will kill their effectiveness — and with it, your conversion rate.
Pedro Ferreira Alves, Country Manager Armatis Portugal: “In Iberian markets, consumers are already comfortable buying through alternative platforms. Social shopping is culturally well received in southern European countries, where social recommendation and community experience carry significant weight. Small Spanish businesses are finding in TikTok Shop a flexible showcase to reach a wider audience without the logistical barriers of traditional marketplaces.”
This shift reaches well beyond the marketing department. It demands a redefinition of roles across the organisation.
Marketing teams. Their remit moves from producing static corporate content to orchestrating a network of creators: setting guidelines, testing messages in real time, and managing performance. One post per week is invisible. The current baseline is 3 to 5 pieces of content per day, combining professional formats with User Generated Content. 60% of your content budget should go to amplifying what your customers create, not to corporate production.
Sales teams. Their mission shifts towards affiliate management: selecting the right creator profiles, negotiating commission structures, tracking performance, and continuously optimising ROI. A campaign mindset is no longer sufficient. Social commerce is an infrastructure change that takes 6 to 18 months to stabilise — plan and invest accordingly.
Customer service. This is where the transformation is most significant. A direct message is no longer a support ticket. It is a purchase intent. The response target is under 15 minutes. According to Armatis research, 68% of consumers abandon their cart when the experience is too slow.
Pedro Ferreira Alves: “We are no longer just expecting a ‘customer support agent’ — we need an actor in the digital commercial relationship. The advisor becomes a usage consultant, not just a problem-solver. We are operating in a new STG logic — Service-to-Growth — not traditional after-sales service.”
Armatis supports this transformation for clients including Decathlon and ManoMano, developing the conversational skills of its teams and repositioning omnichannel customer service as a growth driver rather than a cost centre.
Your e-commerce website is no longer the sole destination in the customer journey. It becomes the source of truth within a distributed ecosystem. In the near future, customers will purchase through AI agents (ChatGPT and other LLMs) that will complete transactions without ever visiting your online store. Your site must now be built as much for machines as for humans.
Three imperatives follow from this. Product data must be centralised and structured to be readable by all interfaces — otherwise your products will simply be absent from AI recommendations. Customer reviews no longer serve only to reassure buyers: they fuel the algorithms of TikTok, Google, and generative AI tools. And social listening is no longer optional. It is the only lever for capturing weak signals on Reddit, YouTube, and in comments sections before an issue becomes a public crisis.
Authentic, high-volume content. 3 to 5 publications per day, with 60% of the budget allocated to amplifying UGC rather than corporate content. The goal is twofold: engage audiences on social platforms and feed the algorithms that will recommend your products tomorrow.
Immediate conversational responsiveness. DMs are warm leads. The conversation is happening everywhere — on TikTok, Google, Reddit. Under 15 minutes to respond, with an omnichannel presence driven by data.
Unified management. For your customer, your brand is a single entity — whether they contact you via Instagram or a future AI agent. Breaking down silos between Marketing, Sales, and CX, with a single CRM and a 360° customer view, is the structural condition for everything else. This is the approach at the core of our retail and e-commerce customer service solutions.
Social commerce is accelerating the disintermediation of the customer journey. Brands that remain site-centric will lose ground to interfaces they do not yet control: automated purchasing agents and volatile communities. The future of commerce is conversational, distributed, and human.
Armatis has supported European retail and e-commerce leaders, from Decathlon to ManoMano, Monoprix and Vertbaudet, for over 35 years in transforming their customer experience operations. Conversational selling, multilingual support in 25 languages, peak management: our teams turn every interaction into an opportunity. In a world where every DM is a lead, every second counts.
Talk to us about your social commerce challenges →
Sources: eMarketer (European social commerce market 2028); Effinity, analysis of TikTok Shop France sales, October-November 2025; Accenture, “Why Shopping’s Set for a Social Revolution”, 2022; Contentsquare, global e-commerce traffic report 2024; Similarweb, traffic decline among France’s 339 largest e-commerce sites, 2024; TikTok / FashionNetwork, live shopping data Europe, November 2025; Siècle Digital, TikTok Shop France review, October 2025.
Every direct message is a purchase intent. Every slow response is a lost sale. Armatis helps retail and e-commerce leaders build the conversational, multilingual and scalable customer operations that social commerce demands.
Social commerce refers to purchasing that takes place directly within social platforms — TikTok, Instagram, YouTube — without redirecting the customer to an external website. Unlike traditional e-commerce, where the customer actively seeks out a product, social commerce intercepts them where they already spend their time, through shoppable videos, live sessions, and creator recommendations. Conversion rates can be up to four times higher than on a standard e-commerce site.
A brand creates a TikTok Shop, lists its products, and activates a network of affiliate creators who promote those products in exchange for a sales commission. Between 84% and 95% of revenue in the best-performing shops comes from these independent creators. Sales happen through shoppable videos, live streams, or an integrated product catalogue within the platform.
Advisors must evolve from a problem-solving role to a usage consulting and digital commercial relationship role. This requires stronger conversational skills, familiarity with the codes of social platforms, and the ability to treat a direct message as a warm lead — with a response target of under 15 minutes.
No. The e-commerce site remains the brand’s source of truth: stock, pricing, reviews, structured product data. However, it must evolve to feed the algorithms of social platforms and generative AI tools that will recommend products without the customer ever visiting the site. It becomes a distributed strategic asset, not a unique destination.
Social commerce generates unpredictable activity peaks, driven by viral creator content or live shopping sessions. Teams must be structured for responsiveness under 15 minutes, across multiple channels — DMs, comments, messaging apps. Outsourcing to a specialist partner like Armatis enables brands to absorb these peaks without degrading the customer experience.
Armatis is a leading European BPO provider in customer experience, supporting large enterprises and mid-market companies in managing and transforming their customer service for over 35 years. Operating across France, Tunisia, Portugal, Poland, Madagascar, and Germany, the group combines sector expertise, multi-site European capability, and advanced technology integration to meet the demands of European and international markets.
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