Social Commerce in Thailand

Social commerce—or buying and selling via social media—is a key driver of Thailand’s digital economy. Online storefronts such as Facebook, Instagram, LINE Official Account (OA), and TikTok Shop allow customers to search, compare, and make purchases immediately. Therefore, convenient and secure payment methods are important for social commerce because they enable increased sales, enhance competitiveness, and promote business growth in the digital era.

In this article, we explain social commerce in Thailand, including marketing and sales models, factors that contribute to the popularity of social commerce in Thailand, and future growth trends. We also recommend effective payment solutions to ensure convenience and security for both businesses and customers.

Key takeaways

Social commerce is a sales model that combines social media platforms with ecommerce.
The most popular social commerce platforms in Thailand are Facebook, Instagram, LINE OA, and TikTok Shop.
Thai customers enjoy combining entertainment with shopping (i.e., shoppertainment).
Live selling is currently one of the most popular trends, especially on TikTok.
Short video clips—such as TikTok videos, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts—have become a core content source for businesses.
Chat commerce helps create a personalized experience and can increase sales, especially using LINE OA in conjunction with the MyShop system.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to collect data and analyze customer and follower sentiment (i.e., sentiment analysis). This includes AI chatbots that can respond to customers 24 hours a day.
One of the important features of payment solutions for social commerce is the creation of payment links.

Social commerce is a sales model that integrates social media platforms and ecommerce systems. It is a comprehensive shopping experience—from product discovery and brand awareness to communication with businesses, purchase decision-making, and payment.

This process occurs within a single social media platform, such as Facebook, Instagram, LINE, and TikTok. Social commerce has become a major sales channel for businesses in Thailand.

Facebook became widely popular in Thailand and developed beyond a communication channel into a significant commerce platform. Businesses shifted from having their own online stores to recognizing opportunities for sales on Facebook. This growth led to the emergence of social commerce—buying and selling products via social media platforms.

In the initial stage, businesses posted products, provided details and prices, and contacted customers via comments or inbox messages. This led to the comment-to-buy trend, where customers comment on a post to confirm their orders. This was followed by direct bank transfers to complete purchases. During the COVID-19 pandemic, customer behavior shifted toward online shopping via social commerce channels, websites, and ecommerce platforms.

As customers became more familiar with online shopping, various social media platforms developed business tools in the form of online marketplaces and shops. These made social commerce more convenient, systematic, and reliable. Since customers are accustomed to using social media in their daily lives, social commerce has transformed traditional shopping into ecommerce that connects and builds relationships with customers.

There are several popular social media platforms for conducting social commerce business in Thailand.

Facebook

Facebook was the initial channel for social commerce in Thailand. This includes sales via Facebook Pages, Groups, and Marketplace. This also includes the trend of selling on live broadcasts to showcase and try products in real time. This allows customers to inquire and instantly order via Messenger.

Selling via Facebook includes a large user base, easy interaction with customers, and conversations, reviews, and comments that can build a brand’s credibility. Additionally, Facebook Ads help businesses market effectively and target audiences based on interests and demographic data.

Instagram

Instagram is a popular platform in Thailand, especially for fashion, beauty, lifestyle, and handmade products. Its strength is in presenting visually appealing and eye-catching content that can help brands look attractive, build brand awareness, and effectively maintain a visual identity.

Businesses can encourage purchases by posting images, Reels, and Stories, as well as using influencers to promote products. Customers can contact the business to make purchases via direct message (DM) or links to a storefront.

LINE

LINE is used by people of all ages across Thailand. It is the number one messaging application—used by over 70% of the Thai population—making it easy to reach customers and build a loyal customer base. LINE OA is LINE’s business account that allows entrepreneurs to communicate with customers, send promotions or personalized messages, and use an automated response system.

Additionally, there are tools for customer segmentation, as well as LINE Points and LINE Coupons, which help encourage repeat purchases and promote sales on the platform.

TikTok

TikTok plays an important role in driving social commerce in Thailand. With short videos, live commerce via TikTok LIVE, and an efficient algorithm, TikTok Shop has become a key channel for building awareness, discovering products, and stimulating purchases.

It reaches a large audience and promotes content that can easily go viral. This can help generate sales quickly by encouraging mass marketing and trending products that can lead to easier purchase decisions for customers. Celebrities, content creators, and influencers often boost sales via live streaming, allowing brands to expand customer reach, increase engagement, and close sales—all on a single platform.

The landscape of social commerce in Thailand is diverse, varying based on target audiences, business strategies, and success rates across social media channels. It can be broadly categorized into the following key models.

Selling via posts

This is the most basic form of social commerce. It is easy to start, low cost, and suitable for businesses of all sizes. Businesses post about products and include images, videos, and details, such as prices, promotions, and contact information. The posts typically include closed captions and hashtags to increase visibility. Customers order via comments, chats, or purchase links. Popular platforms for this method include Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

Selling via chat

Selling via chat involves businesses sending product details to customers via individual or group chat on platforms such as Instagram DM, Facebook Messenger, or LINE. Customers can easily place orders by replying to the chat.

Selling via live stream

This is one of the fastest growing forms of social commerce in Thailand. Businesses use live streams to focus on fun or engaging content (i.e., shoppertainment) to introduce, try, or review products in real time. This can build trust and viewer engagement. Creating a sense of participation with real product demonstrations can encourage customers to make purchases.

There are often special promotions during the live streams to encourage customers to buy quickly. Popular platforms for this selling method include Facebook Live and TikTok Live.

Short clip marketing

Short clip marketing focuses on creating short video content, such as product reviews, demonstrations, or before-and-after videos. They can quickly reach large audiences and have a high chance of going viral due to platform algorithms. Short clip marketing can help create brand awareness and stimulate product interest.

Links to purchase are often included in the bio section of the business’s profile, or customers can click a “Shop” button that links to a purchase page. Popular platforms for this method include Instagram Reels, TikTok videos, and YouTube Shorts.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing involves marketing via social media influencers that act as key opinion leaders (KOLs). By posting product reviews, short clips, or live streams to promote products, brands and influencers use their credibility and follower base to communicate via their own social media channels. Tagging increases reach and can influence customer purchase decisions. Authentic customer reviews often carry more weight than direct brand advertising.

Additionally, personalized discount codes are frequently used to measure results and boost sales. Popular platforms for influencer marketing include Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

Affiliate marketing

With this type of marketing, influencers or the general public help promote sales by creating content and recommending products. This can be via social media posts, video clips, or live streaming. They can also share product links as affiliates (i.e., affiliate links) or unique discount codes in their own sales channels or social media. Affiliates receive commissions when actual sales occur. This is unlike influencer marketing, which does not directly depend on sales.

Many businesses choose to have influencers act as affiliates, which can help build brand awareness and close sales. Popular platforms for affiliate marketing include Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube.

Social commerce is one of the main channels used by both customers and businesses in Thailand. Several factors contribute to its popularity and continuous growth.

Social media plays an important role in driving social commerce and gaining rapid popularity. Thai people use social media at a high rate in their daily lives for news, entertainment, and communicating with others. This helps make presenting products and services convenient and allows for easy and natural access to customers.

Smartphone accessibility

The rate of internet and smartphone access in Thailand is high. This allows customers to access social commerce anytime and anywhere. This has led to high smartphone-based purchasing behavior among Thai people, which often includes social media channels.

Customer interaction

Social media facilitates engagement. Customers can like, comment, share, inquire about products, request reviews, or respond in real time. This fosters positive interactions between customers and businesses and builds familiarity. It also aligns with Thai culture’s emphasis on friendliness, conversation, and negotiation. This can result in customers having more trust in the store, brand, or product.

Power of algorithms

Social media platform algorithms filter and present content that matches customer interests. This allows products and services to reach target audiences accurately and effectively increases conversion rates.

The algorithm also helps boost visibility and distribute content to new user groups with similar behaviors. This can result in products being widely recognized without significant advertising investment. The algorithm also presents content that aligns with customers’ existing interests (i.e., retargeting), which creates familiarity and can increase future purchases.

Sales from engagement

Social commerce increases the convenience of buying and selling and simplifies purchasing decisions by integrating search, comparison, and ordering into a single platform. It also provides convenient connectivity and reliability based on real customers experiences, including reviews, comments, and likes (i.e., engagement). This can influence decision-making and lead to a faster purchasing process. It can also result in increased trust and reduce the likelihood of cart abandonment.

Role of influencers and KOLs

Influencers and KOLs play an important role in driving the success of Thailand’s social commerce. This is especially true when an influencer has a credible image, expertise, or a lifestyle that followers feel connected to. They can build credibility for products or brands, recommend usage, and encourage purchases via posts, reviews, or live streaming.

Low costs

Social commerce significantly helps reduce barriers to starting a business. Small business owners or entrepreneurs can easily start selling without needing a physical store or the expenses of developing and maintaining their own websites. Additionally, there are free and low-cost tools on social media platforms that allow entrepreneurs to start selling immediately simply by opening a social media account.

Convenient and diverse payment systems

A convenient, fast, and diverse payment system that supports customer needs is one of the key factors driving the growth and popularity of social commerce. This includes payment via links, mobile banking transfers, PromptPay, e-wallets, and even cash on delivery (COD). The convenience of payment channels helps reduce limitations in the purchasing decision process.

Social commerce in Thailand continues to show a trend of continuous growth. Businesses that can adapt and effectively use technology and tools have a higher chance of stable growth. It is important for businesses to pay attention to the following social commerce trends.

Live commerce

Live commerce is rapidly growing and becoming an important tool for businesses in Thailand, especially on platforms such as TikTok and Facebook. Live commerce helps create a real-time experience where customers can comment, ask questions, watch product demonstrations, and make purchase decisions immediately. This can result in higher conversion rates compared to other content types.

Live streaming also helps strengthen relationships between brands and customers. Celebrities, influencers, and social media personalities play a key role in reaching customers and boosting sales.

Thai customers expect to experience entertainment alongside purchasing products and services. This is also called “shoppertainment,” which is a combination of the words “shopping” and “entertainment.” Shoppertainment involves content that is fun, has a story, and features charismatic and unique communicators. Combining this with the business’s reputation and other trends further increases visitor engagement and encourages customers to spend more time on the platform.

Social commerce is about presenting products, creating entertaining experiences, and maintaining audience engagement, which can directly impact creator popularity and sales.

Increasing role of microinfluencers

Microinfluencers are influencers with approximately 10,000–100,000 followers. This group has become increasingly influential. They have a niche follower base and often possess specific expertise or particular lifestyles that include beauty, technology, food, or travel. This enables them to communicate effectively.

They deliver messages and reach target audiences with greater precision, and their followers have high engagement rates. Microinfluencers regularly interact with followers and build close relationships. This results in higher credibility and influence on purchase decisions than more popular influencers with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers. Therefore, brands are increasingly turning to microinfluencers to boost sales and target customers at a much lower cost.

Short clips as major content

Short-form videos—such as TikTok videos, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts—have become a major content format driving social commerce in Thailand. Their strengths lie in being concise and simple and capturing customer attention in seconds. Algorithms also help new content or products go viral quickly, even without an existing follower base.

Therefore, short clips help build awareness and encourage purchases via a single piece of content. Businesses focus on creating distinctive content that resonates with customers and effectively explains the value of their products in an engaging way within a short time frame.

Authentic customer reviews

Reviews from real customers—also known as user-generated content (UGC)—are key factors that influence Thai customers’ purchasing decisions. This includes content such as product reviews, unboxings, and before-and-after experiences. Often, customers trust this content more than direct communication from brands.

Brands focusing on creating and supporting transparent and genuine content allow for customer participation, as well as collaborating with credible influencers. This can help build trust, encourage purchasing decisions, and create long-term relationships with customers.

Success of chat commerce

The success of chat commerce is a key driver of social commerce in Thailand. Customers tend to send messages via LINE, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram DM before purchasing to inquire, negotiate, and conduct transactions in real-time conversations.

This creates a personalized experience and increases opportunities for closing sales and boosting conversions effectively. This is especially true when using LINE OA with the MyShop system, which is a popular marketing tool for businesses to communicate with customers.

Social commerce platforms—such as TikTok Shop and Facebook Marketplace—have developed affiliate marketing tools, including real-time commission systems, sales tracking, and AI implementation.

These tools help affiliates recommend products that match customer interests and help creators and influencers generate income from promoting products more easily and effectively. This results in the expansion of the seller-promoter network and drives the growth of social commerce in Thailand.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics

The deployment of AI and customer data analytics—such as click behavior, content engagement, and purchase history—helps businesses understand customers in-depth and make marketing strategy decisions more accurately. This can lead to a better shopping experience that recommends products and offers promotions that match individual interests.

It also includes using AI to collect data and analyze customer and follower sentiment to predict customer needs. This can be used to improve products and services effectively. AI chatbots can also respond to customers 24 hours a day, reducing staff workload and accelerating sales.

When choosing a payment solution for social commerce, consider features, expertise, and the ability to support various systems.

Convenient and comprehensive payment systems

Payment systems are a key factor directly impacting customer experiences, conversion rates, and online store management. Using convenient and comprehensive payment solutions enhances business credibility and competitiveness.

Businesses can choose all-in-one solutions—such as Stripe Payments—which support customer groups with a variety of payment channels, including payment links, digital wallets, PromptPay, mobile banking, and COD.

Payment links

Payment links are the heart of social commerce because of their convenience and speed. Using payment links has the following benefits:

Flexibility
Whether customers are paying via credit and debit cards, mobile banking, PromptPay, or digital wallets, they can choose to pay via a single link.
Easy acceptance of payments
Payment links are convenient for online businesses. There’s no need to have an online store or create a shopping cart system or complicated application programming interface (API) connections. Businesses can design and customize the payment link page as desired, with no costs for creating and maintaining websites.
Increased sales
Regardless of the channel used to communicate with customers, businesses can send payment links to close sales immediately. This includes sales via chat messages or posts on social media.
Positive shopping experiences
Customers simply click on the payment links to immediately choose their preferred payment methods. No registration or proof of transfer is required. There is also no need to check the transfer amount or account name because the system automatically fills in the payment details. This provides convenience and a positive customer experience.

Integration with other systems

Choose a social commerce solution that easily connects with payment systems and other management systems via APIs, plug-ins, or additional apps. Connect with important systems, such as those for data analytics, inventory, and customer relationship management (CRM). This ensures consistent information across platforms, which can reduce redundant work and enable highly efficient operations via automatic data connection and updates.

Data recording and tracking for analysis

An important solution for social commerce is the ability to systematically record and track customer usage data, as well as marketing campaigns and promotions. This allows for immediate verification of key data, such as sales generated from each campaign, number of new customers or members, and promo codes used. This data helps businesses better control budgets and accurately analyze the performance of social commerce campaigns.

High security standards

Choose solutions that meet international security standards, such as data encryption and two-factor authentication (2FA). Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and antifraud systems detect suspicious behavior in real time. These security standards help build customer confidence in online transactions via social media platforms.

Transparent fee structures

Fees must be displayed with full transparency, featuring clear per-transaction fee specifications without hidden charges. Furthermore, transaction data is systematically recorded, enabling customers to clearly review their transfer history—including dates, times, and amounts. This facilitates convenient financial reporting and retrospective auditing and helps businesses plan their costs accurately.

Support for business growth

Choose a service provider that supports future business growth and is capable of handling increased customer volumes, orders, and transactions across sales channels. This is especially important during festivals, special promotions, or live streaming events with high sales.

The system must support sales growth without delays, errors, or system crashes, regardless of the increase. Choosing a growth-oriented solution from the start can help businesses adapt and operate smoothly.

How Stripe Payment Links can help

Stripe Payment Links is a no-code solution that allows you to quickly create and share secure payment pages online.

Payment Links can help you:

Get paid faster: Share custom payment links with customers and accept one-time or recurring payments instantly, without invoicing or complex integrations.
Improve conversion: Boost payment conversion rates with a mobile-optimized design and streamlined checkout experience.
Save time: Easily create, customize, and share payment pages through the Stripe Dashboard—with minimal coding.
Expand globally: Accept payments from customers worldwide, with Adaptive Pricing localizing prices for 135+ currencies and offering local payment methods that are ready to use.
Access other Stripe products: Integrate Payment Links with other Stripe products—such as Stripe Billing, Stripe Radar, and Stripe Tax—to add more payment capabilities.
Maintain control: Customize the look and feel of your payment pages to match your brand, and track all your payment activities in one place.
Learn more about how Payment Links makes it easy to accept online payments, or get started today.

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