Vietnam Shows Shopee-TikTok Shop Race Tightening In Southeast Asia

Shopee’s share of Vietnam’s e-commerce market fell from 61% to 53% between May 2025 and April 2026, while TikTok Shop’s rose from 33% to 44%.

TikTok Shop’s gross merchandise value also increased 83% year on year, as Vietnam’s e-commerce sales reached US$5.64 billion in the first quarter of 2026 after growing 47%.

The figures point to a Southeast Asian market increasingly concentrated around two platforms, Tech Collective SEA reported in an article on social commerce.

Shopee remains the region’s largest e-commerce platform, but TikTok Shop is challenging its position by combining entertainment, creator content and shopping in one experience.

Vietnam’s Two-Platform Shift

Vietnam’s market is expanding while leadership is becoming more concentrated.

Merchants that once spread resources across multiple marketplaces are increasingly focusing on Shopee and TikTok Shop because the two platforms capture most customer traffic.

That makes Vietnam an early example of how platform competition could develop elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

The market is not simply adding more online buyers; it is concentrating product discovery, advertising and transactions within a small number of dominant ecosystems.

Reports put Southeast Asia’s platform e-commerce gross merchandise value at US$157.6 billion in 2025.

Shopee, TikTok Shop including Tokopedia, and Lazada together accounted for 98.8% of the region’s total GMV.

Discovery Becomes the Battleground

Traditional e-commerce begins with a search.

A buyer enters a product term, compares price, reviews and delivery options, and then chooses an item.

TikTok Shop changes the starting point by placing products inside short videos and livestream shopping sessions, where consumers encounter them while watching entertainment rather than actively searching.

That shift changes the basis of competition.

Price, discounts and product assortment still matter, but engagement, content quality, creator networks and customer retention now play a larger role.

E-commerce platforms are becoming content platforms, while social-media services are becoming shopping destinations.

Shopee is responding by adding social-commerce functions to its existing marketplace.

Its investments include livestream shopping, creator programmes, affiliate marketing and personalised recommendation algorithms.

These features allow the company to defend its marketplace scale while adapting to a shopping journey increasingly shaped by content and recommendations.

For brands, marketplace optimisation is no longer enough on its own.

Product photography, pricing and search placement remain important, but short-video advertising, creator collaborations, affiliate marketing and livestream operations are becoming part of the sales process.

Marketing budgets are moving beyond sponsored listings toward video production, influencer partnerships, social-commerce campaigns and creator-led initiatives.

Growth Around the Platforms

The two-platform structure also creates demand for businesses that support merchants rather than compete with Shopee or TikTok Shop directly.

Inventory synchronisation, order processing, advertising management and unified analytics become more valuable as sellers operate across several channels.

Logistics offers another opening.

Consumers still expect quick and reliable delivery regardless of whether a purchase began with a search, a video recommendation or a livestream.

Warehousing, last-mile delivery, returns management and cross-border logistics can therefore benefit from rising e-commerce activity.

Merchant-enablement tools are becoming another support layer.

AI-powered content generation, creator-campaign management, livestream production and performance analytics help sellers maintain the continuous flow of media, transactions and fulfilment that social commerce requires.

AI is also being applied to personalised recommendations, merchant productivity and customer engagement.

The result is a marketplace contest increasingly focused on attention and discovery as well as checkout.

Shopee brings marketplace scale and is adding social features, while TikTok Shop brings content-led commerce.

Merchants must now manage both search visibility and creator-driven discovery, while startups build the logistics, software and cross-platform infrastructure needed to operate across the region’s dominant ecosystems.