Platform Growth Under Regulatory Pressure A Case Analysis of TikTok Shop in Indonesia

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-777-4_47How to use a DOI?

Keywords

TikTok Shop; social commerce; Indonesia; platform strategy; regulatory pressure; digital economy; small business management

Abstract

TikTok Shop in Indonesia provides a useful case for studying the tension between platform growth, small business participation, consumer trust, and public regulation in the digital economy. The platform entered Indonesia with a model that connected social media content, creator influence, livestreaming, product discovery, and direct purchase in one application. Its rapid growth helped many sellers reach consumers at lower marketing cost, but it also raised concerns about unfair competition, data governance, predatory pricing, and the protection of offline merchants. In 2023, Indonesia restricted e commerce transactions inside social media platforms, which forced TikTok Shop to suspend direct transactions. TikTok later returned through a strategic partnership with Tokopedia. This paper analyzes the case from a management perspective. It argues that TikTok Shop’s development in Indonesia was shaped by three connected forces. The platform created demand through entertainment based commerce. It supported seller growth through low entry barriers and creator networks. It also had to adapt its business model after regulatory pressure changed the rules of market participation. The case shows that platform success in emerging markets depends not only on user traffic and transaction efficiency, but also on local legitimacy, institutional compliance, seller trust, and the ability to balance innovation with public policy concerns.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Zhixian Cui
AU  - Zhang Fan
AU  - Ying Min
AU  - Zhifei Wang
AU  - Shuo Zhang
AU  - Qingyu Zhou
AU  - Chang Liu
AU  - Zhenqing Ma
AU  - Shixiao Liu
AU  - Yishi Du
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/30
TI  - Platform Growth Under Regulatory Pressure A Case Analysis of TikTok Shop in Indonesia
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 8th International Conference on Economic Management and Cultural Industry (ICEMCI 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 438
EP  - 444
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-777-4_47
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-777-4_47
ID  - Cui2026
ER  -