Southeast Asia’s e-commerce market is entering a new phase as social commerce changes how consumers discover and purchase products. Shopee remains the region’s largest platform, but TikTok Shop is emerging as its strongest challenger by combining entertainment, creator content and shopping within a single experience.

This shift is particularly visible in Vietnam, where Shopee’s market share fell from 61% to 53% between May 2025 and April 2026, while TikTok Shop’s rose from 33% to 44%. In addition, the gross merchandise value (GMV) of TikTok Shop increased by 83% year on year, highlighting how fast social commerce is becoming popular among the people of Vietnam.

We take a closer look at Southeast Asia’s AI boom and why adoption alone is not enough

Vietnam offers a glimpse into Southeast Asia’s future

Vietnam’s e-commerce sector has become one of the most dynamic in Southeast Asia. It is supported by strong digital adoption, rising consumer spending and increasing smartphone usage throughout the region. Vietnam’s e-commerce sales reached US$5.64 billion during the first quarter of 2026, representing 47% year-on-year growth. While this rapid expansion benefits the wider e-commerce ecosystem, it also illustrates how market leadership is becoming increasingly concentrated between two dominant platforms.

Instead of competing with numerous marketplaces, merchants today tend to focus their resources on Shopee and TikTok Shop as the two combined capture the lion’s share of customer traffic. Vietnam therefore can be taken as an early example of what platform competition in Southeast Asia will look like in the next few years.

Search is giving way to discovery

e-commerce markets have traditionally been based on search functionality. Individuals identify something that they need to buy, type keywords into a search bar and decide what to purchase based on the cost, reviews, or shipping arrangements. With the introduction of TikTok Shop, this process has changed significantly.

Rather than starting with a search, people find the things they want while engaging with the content produced by creators in short clips or during live streaming shopping sessions. Products are presented to users in the form of entertainment naturally rather than actively being sought out by consumers. What may seem like a subtle change bears significant commercial implications. 

Discovery-led shopping allows brands to generate demand before consumers even realise they want a particular product. Recommendations from creators often feel more authentic than conventional advertisements, while livestreams provide demonstrations, promotions and real-time engagement that traditional product listings cannot easily replicate. Shopping therefore becomes part of the content experience rather than a separate activity.

Shopee is adapting rather than standing still

Although TikTok Shop has attracted significant attention, Shopee remains Southeast Asia’s dominant e-commerce platform and continues investing heavily to defend its leadership position. Over the years, Shopee has expanded its own livestream shopping capabilities, creator programmes, affiliate marketing ecosystem and personalised recommendation algorithms. Rather than relying solely on traditional marketplace mechanics, Shopee increasingly incorporates social commerce features into its existing platform. This reflects a broader industry trend.

Competition today no longer revolves around pricing, discounts, or the variety of products. Instead, the competition now revolves around engagement, content quality, creator ecosystems as well as customer retention. E-commerce platforms are now becoming content platforms just as social media sites are evolving into shopping destinations. The distinction between entertainment and e-commerce continues to blur.

Content has become a commercial advantage

For brands, succeeding in Southeast Asia’s e-commerce market now requires a much broader skill set than simply optimising marketplace listings. High-quality product photography, pricing and SEO are still important factors. However, they alone will not suffice anymore. Nowadays, brands require something compelling, such as short video ads, brand-to-creator collaborations, affiliate marketing and even live streaming, which can capture people’s attention. All these factors influence the way that marketing budgets are allocated nowadays.

Brands do not limit themselves by investing solely in sponsored product listings. Today, they allocate more on influencer partnerships, video production, social commerce campaigns and creator-led marketing initiatives. Performance is increasingly measured not only by clicks and conversions but also by engagement, community building and audience trust. The brands that succeed are often those capable of combining traditional ecommerce discipline with continuous content creation.

Southeast Asia’s wider e-commerce market is consolidating

Reports highlight that the GMV of platform e-commerce in Southeast Asia stood at US$157.6 billion by 2025, with Shopee, TikTok Shop (including Tokopedia) and Lazada collectively accounting for 98.8% of total GMV in the region. This indicates that although e-commerce is increasing in general, the growth in the industry is increasingly focused in a few dominant ecosystems. With TikTok Shop becoming increasingly popular and Shopee developing social commerce capabilities of its own, the fight is no longer to bring in new consumers but more on influencing how those shoppers discover products to begin with.

New opportunities beyond the marketplaces

While platform competition garners the most attention, some of the biggest opportunities for startups may emerge around these platforms rather than within them. As merchants become increasingly active across Shopee, TikTok Shop and other online marketplaces, the need for tools that simplify multichannel commerce will continue to grow. Inventory synchronisation, order processing, advertising management and unified analytics are becoming increasingly valuable to e-commerce operations.

Logistics also remains a major opportunity. Today’s consumers expect quick and reliable delivery of purchases regardless of where they discovered these products. Startups that improve warehousing, last-mile delivery, returns management and cross-border logistics can benefit from rising e-commerce activity without competing directly with the dominant marketplaces.

Merchant enablement represents another promising category. AI-powered content generation, creator campaign management, livestream production tools and performance analytics are becoming essential as social commerce becomes increasingly sophisticated. Reports have also highlighted AI’s growing influence on ecommerce operations, from personalised recommendations to merchant productivity and customer engagement. 

The next phase of e-commerce competition

Southeast Asia’s major e-commerce platforms are no longer competing solely on price, logistics or product assortment. Instead, the battle is increasingly centred on attention, influence and discovery. TikTok Shop has demonstrated how creator-led commerce can reshape consumer behaviour, while Shopee continues to adapt its marketplace model by strengthening its social commerce capabilities.

For merchants, this means future success will depend on mastering both marketplace optimisation and content creation. A high search ranking alone will no longer guarantee visibility, just as engaging videos without operational excellence may struggle to generate sustainable sales.

The next phase of Southeast Asia’s e-commerce market may therefore be shaped by a growing contest between Shopee’s marketplace scale and TikTok Shop’s content-led commerce model. The winners may not be limited to the platforms themselves. Startups building logistics systems, merchant software and cross-platform infrastructure could also benefit by helping brands operate effectively wherever consumers choose to shop.