This document is the official 2025 Southeast Asia Cross-Border Business White Paper produced by TikTok Shop. It aims to help merchants efficiently enter the Southeast Asian cross-border e-commerce market and achieve sustainable development. The white paper mainly covers market environment, business methods, practical operation manuals, appendices, and more. The following is a detailed introduction:
- Market Environment Analysis
- Global and Southeast Asian E-commerce Development Trends: In 2024, the domestic e-commerce penetration rate reached 27%, the market is becoming saturated, competition is fierce, and customer acquisition costs are rising; the global e-commerce penetration rate (excluding China) is 12%, and even lower in emerging markets, presenting huge opportunities overseas. In the past five years, the growth rate of global e-commerce transaction volume has consistently exceeded that of the domestic market, and this trend is expected to continue for the next five years. The Southeast Asian market has promising prospects, with a GDP growth rate of 6% in 2024, e-commerce market growth of 13%, and an e-commerce penetration rate of 11%, making it the fastest-growing and largest market among mature markets. Countries in the region have close cooperation with China, a favorable business environment, high cultural similarity, a growing middle class, a young population dividend, and a willingness to spend ahead of time, making it a golden track for merchants to deploy in emerging markets.
- Advantages of TikTok Shop: Relying on the content + e-commerce model, it allows merchants to build brands through content marketing while also driving sales and profits, making it the optimal solution for merchants to go global with branding. TikTok Shop has the longest presence in Southeast Asia, holds an absolute market share advantage, is deeply trusted by users, has 325 million monthly active users, and boasts the highest penetration and strongest user stickiness.
- Key Guidelines for Domestic Trade Merchants Going Global: Domestic trade merchants do not need to start from scratch when going global and can leverage their domestic experience in overseas markets. In terms of costs, the structure is consistent with the domestic market, but there are additional costs such as cross-border shipping, overseas warehouses, tariffs, and exchange rates. For product selection, best-selling products in the domestic or Southeast Asian markets can be directly transferred, and new products can be tested at low cost through cross-border direct mail. Some categories require qualifications to be sold, and attention must be paid to prohibited and restricted categories. For onboarding, there is no significant difference from other e-commerce platforms: enterprise business licenses must be registered for more than 14 calendar days, individual business licenses for more than 60 calendar days and have third-party platform experience. The operation model is basically the same as mainstream e-commerce platforms, but short video orders account for a high proportion and can be a key investment area. In addition, the white paper covers topics such as operational growth, settlement and payment, cross-border logistics, and customer experience.
- Core Business Methods: Multi-domain business methods are core, including content operations, mall products, advertising and marketing, customer experience, etc. Multi-domain efforts can accelerate conversion and efficiently connect with customers. Most merchants succeed on TikTok Shop through two methods: first, content-driven growth, where merchants with content experience can replicate their experience through self-made short videos + cold-start advertising; second, shelf-driven growth, through mall search or mass influencer cooperation + cold-start advertising.
- Practical Operation Manual for Going Global
- Product Mall: Starting from the customer purchase journey, including product selection, pricing, product uploading, exposure, etc. Product selection can be done by identifying potential categories and products through best-selling product lists, popular search keywords, official tools, and third-party data platforms. Analyze reviews, functions, and materials of best-selling categories to confirm entry opportunities, exclude products with uncontrollable logistics costs, high return rates, or compliance red lines, and select differentiated products for different domains and test them. Pricing can refer to similar product prices or use a pricing calculator based on cost items to calculate the selling price. When uploading products, fill in the required information, including name, logistics and warranty, details, and sales information. For exposure, pay attention to store operations, mall recommendations, marketing channels, and more.
- Content Alliance: Includes effective cooperation with alliance influencers and efficient operation of self-selling content. Cooperation with influencers involves product selection, screening, establishing contact, sending samples, fulfillment, and review. Self-selling content operations include short video operations and live streaming. Short video operations require accumulating materials, testing products through ad traffic, and optimizing through review. Live streaming requires good preparation and traffic strategies.
- Advertising and Marketing: Precise and efficient advertising can leverage the GMV Max tool, which is the latest automated advertising solution that optimizes ROI across all channels, divided into Product GMV Max and Live GMV Max. Deep activation of marketing activities requires attention to registration methods and activity skills in different domains. Activities are key opportunities for merchants to gain platform exposure and subsidies, and merchants should participate as much as possible.
- Customer Experience: Includes logistics delivery and customer service experience. Logistics delivery has two modes: cross-border small parcel delivery (direct mail) and overseas warehouse delivery. Pay attention to delivery timeliness, return and exchange issues, etc. Customer service experience involves key management indicators such as the store's newbie village, experience score, negative review rate, and after-sales management. Merchants must meet the corresponding standards to ensure normal store operations.
- Others: Settlement and payment require binding a third-party payment partner, and payment will be received about 7-9 calendar days after the after-sales period ends. Translation tools can be used in scenarios such as product uploading, communication with buyers, and short video production to improve operational efficiency.
