For years, online shopping has followed a familiar pattern.
You know what you want.
You search for it.
You compare prices.
You read the reviews.
You buy.
Simple.
But according to TikTok Shop’s George Meagher and Ed Gilmartin, that customer journey is rapidly becoming outdated.
Speaking during an Interactive Live Session at Elite Business Live 2026, the pair argued that consumers are no longer just searching for products. Increasingly, they’re discovering them through content, creators and communities long before they ever think about making a purchase.
The shift has given rise to what TikTok calls Discovery Commerce, a model that blends entertainment, community and shopping into one seamless experience.
For business owners, it represents more than just another sales channel. It signals a fundamental change in how customers make buying decisions.
Shopping starts with attention
One statistic immediately challenged many assumptions in the room.
TikTok now has more than one billion monthly active users globally, including more than 30 million in the UK. Even more surprising, one of its fastest-growing shopping demographics is adults aged 35 and over, dispelling the myth that TikTok is purely the domain of Gen Z.
But it wasn’t audience size that Meagher believed was most significant.
It was attention.
UK users spend an average of almost two hours a day on the platform, creating opportunities for brands that simply don’t exist elsewhere.
As Meagher explained, brands shouldn’t think of TikTok as another ecommerce marketplace.
It’s an entertainment platform first. That distinction changes everything.
Rather than asking customers to interrupt what they’re doing to shop, TikTok integrates products into content people already want to watch. “Entertainment is key to cutting through.”
Discovery has replaced search
Traditional ecommerce is built around intent.
Customers search because they already know they need something. Discovery Commerce turns that process on its head.
Instead of waiting for customers to search, products find customers.
Meagher compared the experience to wandering around a department store, where an unexpected recommendation from a knowledgeable assistant leads to an unplanned purchase. By contrast, traditional online shopping often feels like “a pretty joyless run through lists and lists of things.”
That difference matters.
People don’t simply buy products; they buy stories, recommendations and demonstrations.
Authentic experiences.
TikTok Shop allows all of those moments to happen without forcing customers to leave the platform, reducing friction between discovery and purchase.
Creators are becoming the new sales team
One of the biggest misconceptions surrounding TikTok Shop is that brands need to produce all the content themselves.
In reality, much of the platform’s success comes from creators. Rather than relying solely on branded advertising, businesses provide products to creators who introduce them to their own audiences. If those videos resonate, the platform amplifies them further, encouraging additional creators and customers to join the conversation.
The result is a self-reinforcing cycle of discovery, engagement and sales. “The algorithm falls in love with volume and engagement.”
For businesses, this creates something traditional advertising often struggles to achieve. Trust at scale!
Recommendations feel more authentic because they come from people audiences already follow, rather than directly from brands themselves.
Great products still need great fundamentals
Despite all the excitement surrounding creators, live shopping and viral videos, Meagher was clear that the basics of ecommerce haven’t changed…
- Competitive pricing
- Reliable fulfilment
- High-quality product imagery
- Strong product descriptions
- Search optimisation
These remain the foundations of success.
Social commerce doesn’t replace those fundamentals. It amplifies them.
Businesses that already excel operationally simply gain another way to reach customers.
Those with weak customer experiences will struggle regardless of how many views their videos receive.
It’s a reminder that viral moments can attract attention and consistent execution earns repeat business.
AI is making marketing smarter, not harder
The second half of the session explored how artificial intelligence is simplifying advertising on the platform.
Rather than requiring businesses to manually analyse thousands of videos, engagement metrics and conversion rates, TikTok’s AI-powered advertising tools increasingly handle much of that optimisation automatically.
Campaigns can identify which creative assets are performing best, adjust budgets and optimise performance in real time.
For growing businesses with limited marketing resources, this removes much of the complexity traditionally associated with digital advertising.
Instead of spending hours analysing dashboards, business owners can focus on producing compelling content while AI manages much of the optimisation behind the scenes.
It’s another example of technology taking care of repetitive tasks while allowing people to focus on creativity.
The opportunity is bigger than social media
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the session was that TikTok Shop isn’t simply another ecommerce platform.
It’s evidence of a broader shift in consumer behaviour.
People increasingly expect shopping to feel entertaining, interactive and personal.
They want to discover products through people they trust rather than endless search results.
That expectation isn’t likely to remain exclusive to TikTok. It will influence every digital shopping experience over the coming years.
The future of shopping is discovery
The phrase Discovery Commerce may be new, but the principle behind it isn’t.
People have always enjoyed discovering products through recommendations, demonstrations and conversations.
What’s changed is the technology enabling those experiences to happen at unprecedented scale.
For businesses, the message from Elite Business Live was clear. Success on platforms like TikTok Shop isn’t about chasing viral trends. It’s about creating content that genuinely helps, entertains or inspires.
It’s about building communities rather than audiences.
And it’s about recognising that today’s customer journey rarely begins with a search bar.
More often than not, it begins with a scroll.
Because in modern commerce, the brands that win aren’t always the ones customers are looking for. They’re the ones customers are delighted to discover.
