Social Commerce Is Growing Up - and Premium Brands Should Be Paying Attention

Social commerce has come a long way from the slightly chaotic TikTok LIVE where someone convinces you that you absolutely need a £6 kitchen gadget you hadn't heard of five minutes earlier.

Buying through social now feels pretty normal. We discover products there, watch creators review them, head to the comments for a second opinion and, increasingly, buy them without ever leaving the platform.

But we think the next big shift in social commerce isn't just going to be how many people are shopping through social. It's what they're willing to buy there.

We're already starting to see the ceiling move, with higher-value products accounting for a growing share of social commerce sales and more established brands treating platforms like TikTok Shop as a serious retail channel.

So, are we about to start buying our big-ticket purchases through our FYP?

We think so. But probably not in quite the way you might expect.

The £6 TikTok Shop era isn't over - it's just getting company

Let's start by saying that the cheap, slightly random TikTok Shop purchase isn't going anywhere. There will always be room in our hearts, homes and kitchen cupboards for something we saw demonstrated once and immediately decided would change our lives.

But those purchases have done something much bigger than create a generation of vegetable-chopper owners. They've made buying through social feel normal.

The friction has gradually disappeared. You can discover something through a creator, see it demonstrated, read what other people think and buy it within minutes, all without really feeling like you've stopped scrolling and started shopping.

And the scale of that behaviour is growing. On Black Friday 2025, TikTok Shop UK was selling 27 items every second, while sales across the Black Friday to Cyber Monday period grew 50% year on year. Established brand participation was growing too.

At this point, social commerce looks a lot less like an experimental platform feature and a lot more like an actual retail channel.

The really interesting bit is what people are buying

Social commerce has historically made most sense for products that are relatively inexpensive, visually demonstrable and easy to buy on impulse.

See it. Want it. Add to basket. Try not to think about how many other things you've bought this way.

But we're starting to see more considered categories break through.

In January 2026, products priced above £100 accounted for 41% of UK TikTok Shop revenue among merchants tracked by commerce platform Rithum. Home, appliances and premium clothing were among the categories driving those higher-value purchases.

That's a pretty significant jump from the stereotype of TikTok Shop being somewhere you go for cheap beauty dupes and gadgets.

It suggests that as people become more familiar with shopping through social, they're becoming comfortable taking bigger purchasing decisions there too.

And that's where things get much more interesting for premium brands.

The more expensive the product, the more important the content becomes

You can probably convince someone to take a chance on a £6 product with one entertaining video and a decent discount.

A £200 beauty device needs a little more work. A sofa needs even more. And if we're talking about a designer handbag or piece of jewellery, people are going to have questions.

Luckily, answering questions is something social is quite good at.

Creators can show how something actually works, compare it with alternatives, demonstrate how it fits into real life and explain whether they think it's worth the money. Comments add another layer of reassurance through reviews, recommendations and extremely specific questions from people who have clearly done their research.

For premium brands, that makes content part of the sales experience rather than simply the thing that gets someone to the product page.

The higher the price, the more important proof becomes.

Creators could become the new shop floor

That shift also makes the role of creators much more interesting.

For an impulse purchase, a creator might simply create the desire to buy something. For a considered purchase, they can help someone justify it.

There's a big difference between “OMG you need this” and “I've used this for three months, here's what I like, here's what I don't and here's who I actually think it's worth the money for.”

As prices increase, the second becomes much more valuable.

Detailed reviews, comparisons, tutorials, longer-term testing and expert recommendations can answer the questions that would traditionally have been asked in-store or researched across several different websites.

For brands, that means creator selection can't only be about who can generate the biggest reach. Authority, expertise and genuine audience trust become increasingly important when you're asking someone to spend serious money.

The creator doesn't just generate awareness anymore. They help build the confidence required to convert.

LIVE could become less shopping channel, more digital salesperson

LIVE commerce has historically had a certain reputation: lots of products, lots of discounts, lots of urgency and someone reminding you that there are ONLY THREE LEFT.

But for premium and considered products, LIVE has a much more interesting role to play.

Instead of simply creating urgency, it can provide consultation.

A beauty brand can demonstrate an expensive device and answer questions about different skin types. A furniture brand can show scale, materials and finishes. A fashion brand can talk through fit and styling. An expert can compare several products and explain why you might choose one over another.

It's essentially taking some of the best bits of an in-store experience and putting them directly into someone's feed.

As social commerce becomes more premium, LIVE could evolve with it - moving from flash-sale entertainment towards something much closer to digital clienteling.

And then there's luxury

This is where the conversation gets particularly interesting.

Social already plays a huge role in luxury discovery. Creators explain craftsmanship, styling, pricing and whether something is actually worth the investment, while comments have become somewhere shoppers ask about everything from sizing to authenticity.

And increasingly, we're seeing that discovery turn into purchasing behaviour.

TikTok Shop has already experimented with high-end categories and resale, while luxury shoppers are becoming more comfortable discovering and purchasing premium fashion and beauty through social platforms.

Does that mean everyone is about to casually add a £5,000 handbag to their TikTok basket?

Probably not.

But it does mean the line between social content and luxury commerce is getting much blurrier.

Premium social commerce has one big hurdle: trust

The more expensive something becomes, the less likely we are to shrug if it turns up looking nothing like the video.

For premium social commerce to really scale, the experience around the product needs to become more premium too.

Authentication matters. Returns matter. Delivery matters. Customer service matters. Reviews matter. Buyer protection matters. The reputation of the creator recommending it matters.

Essentially, everything that reduces the perceived risk of pressing buy becomes more important as the number on the checkout page gets bigger.

That's why premiumisation won't happen simply because brands upload more expensive products to TikTok Shop.

Platforms and brands need to make consumers feel as comfortable making a £500 purchase as they currently do making a £20 one.

Social doesn't necessarily need to own the checkout to own the sale

There's also a temptation to measure the growth of premium social commerce purely through native checkout.

We think that's too narrow.

Imagine someone discovers a designer bag through TikTok, watches three creator reviews, searches for styling videos, reads the comments, saves a comparison, follows the brand and eventually buys it through the brand's website or walks into a store.

Technically, TikTok didn't get the transaction.

But social did a lot of the selling.

For higher-value products, that distinction is important. The journey from discovery to conversion is naturally going to be longer, and not every premium brand will want or need to complete that journey through an in-app checkout.

The bigger shift is that social is becoming capable of taking someone from “I've never heard of this” to “I'm comfortable spending serious money on this.”

That's social commerce too.

What should premium brands actually do about it?

Firstly, don't write off social commerce because your product isn't an obvious impulse purchase.

Higher-consideration products can actually give brands more interesting content to work with because there's more to explain, demonstrate and prove.

Start with what someone needs to know before they'll feel comfortable spending money with you. What questions do customers repeatedly ask? What makes the price feel justified? What do they need to see in real life? What could a creator explain better than your product page?

Then build content around those things.

That could mean creator reviews rather than one-off sponsored posts, LIVE demonstrations rather than another polished product shot, or comparisons, tutorials and FAQs designed around the actual questions people ask before buying.

And don't judge everything by whether somebody taps “buy” immediately.

For premium brands, social commerce is increasingly about the whole content-to-confidence-to-conversion journey.

So, is the TikTok shopping basket about to get more expensive?

We think so.

We've already reached the point where buying through social feels normal. The next stage is finding out how far that behaviour can stretch.

As trust grows, shopping experiences improve and more established brands get involved, consumers are likely to become increasingly comfortable making considered, higher-value purchases through the same platforms they originally opened to watch videos.

The £6 TikTok Shop purchase isn't disappearing.

It's just getting some much more expensive company.

And for major brands still treating social commerce as something that only works for cheap, viral products, now might be the time to reconsider what belongs in the basket.