Southeast Asia's Social Commerce GMV to Hit $77.9B by 2026, Accounting for Nearly 40% of Total E-Commerce Transaction Value

According to data from a 2026 Southeast Asian live commerce report released by a Singapore-based research and venture capital institution, the combined gross merchandise value of social commerce across three major platforms -- Shopee, TikTok Shop and Lazada -- reached $49.7 billion in 2025, nearly doubling year-on-year. In the first half of 2026, transaction value in this sector hit $33.8 billion. At the current growth rate, the full-year total size is projected to reach $77.9 billion.

Social commerce accounted for 37% of Southeast Asia's total platform e-commerce transaction value in the first half of 2026, up from just 20% in 2024. Once a supplementary marketing channel, social commerce has now become a core sales engine for the region's online retail sector.

The Southeast Asian e-commerce market has long been defined by three characteristics: mobile-first usage habits, highly price-sensitive users, and high social media penetration. Social commerce sits exactly at the intersection of these three traits, integrating product demonstrations, creator recommendations, and payment gateways into a single consumer journey, while combining entertainment and instant gratification.

Live commerce is the most high-profile format under this trend, allowing sellers, creators, and brands to showcase products in real time, answer questions, and stimulate consumption through limited-time offers or platform subsidies. For categories such as beauty, fashion, home goods, and fast-moving consumer goods, live streaming has become a routine operational channel, no longer just a promotional tactic used during large shopping festivals.

Most brands have now shifted their focus from whether to adopt live streaming at all to defining the role of live streaming within their overall business. Some brands use live streaming as a conversion channel to drive sales during platform promotion periods, while others leverage it for new product user education, building trust among consumers unfamiliar with the brand, or clearing slow-moving inventory.

Different products align with different live streaming operational logics. Low-ticket items such as lipsticks, snack bundles, and small kitchen gadgets are suitable for quick demonstrations to drive impulse purchases, while products with longer decision-making cycles require more educational content, user reviews, and repeated exposure to convert. A live stream's anchor setup, content script, pacing, product selection mix, and discount configuration all directly impact final sales.

For most participants, the return on investment for live commerce remains attractive for now, but such returns will not stay at elevated levels long term. Current high returns are supported by growing user attention, platform subsidies, and still-immature industry competition. As more brands, service providers, sellers, and creators master the same operational capabilities, the cost of differentiated competition will continue to rise.

Performance-focused live streaming tactics alone can easily be replicated by competitors, and long-term competitive advantage will shift toward players that balance sales conversion with building long-term user trust. The fragmented Southeast Asian market has stark differences in language, culture, logistics, and purchasing power across regions, making localization adaptation no longer an insignificant detail.

The growing popularity of AI-powered live streaming is reshaping the industry's cost structure. Currently, the operational cost of AI-driven live streams is only 20% to 25% that of equivalent human-led live streams, while the average hourly transaction value can reach 80% of human-hosted sessions. This technology lowers the entry barrier for small and medium-sized sellers, and also helps large brands reduce operational costs to enable longer content broadcast hours.

As technology becomes more widespread, barriers posed by general operational capabilities continue to weaken. Product quality, consumer insights, creative direction, creator relationships, community trust, and brand positioning -- elements that cannot easily be automated -- will become new core differentiators.

China is the global benchmark for live commerce development, boasting a more mature ecosystem, complete infrastructure, a professional creator network, more frequent user consumption habits, and more in-depth applications of data and automation. Southeast Asian market participants have previously drawn heavily on Chinese operational experience, but the Chinese model can only serve as a reference, not a template that can be copied directly.

There are vast differences across Southeast Asian countries in creator ecosystems, user trust logic, payment habits, logistics reliability, local languages, and platform rules. The next phase of social commerce development will no longer involve copying a single model, but will require localization adaptation tailored to different markets.

Live commerce has become an industry infrastructure, but it cannot replace a comprehensive social commerce strategy. Brands that overinvest in live streaming while underinvesting in areas such as short videos, affiliate marketing, and review guidance are prone to mistaking a single conversion touchpoint for the complete consumer journey.

This article was first published on the official website of Ebrun.