Marketplace Pulse Research: Top TikTok Shop Sellers Are 5x More Likely to Succeed on Amazon Than the Reverse

According to the latest cross-platform seller performance data released by U.S. market research firm Marketplace Pulse, there is extremely limited overlap between the top seller cohorts on TikTok Shop and Amazon’s U.S. marketplace.

Marketplace Pulse matched the top 10,000 sellers on each platform by legal business entity name, finding only 498 sellers appeared on both lists, accounting for roughly 5% of the total seller count on either individual ranking. Among the top 100 sellers on TikTok Shop U.S., 20% have secured a spot in Amazon’s top 10,000 seller list, while only 4% of Amazon’s top 100 sellers have managed to break into TikTok Shop’s top 10,000 ranking. For sellers with a presence on both platforms, brands that found product-market fit on TikTok Shop are 5 times more likely to succeed when expanding to Amazon than top Amazon sellers are when entering TikTok Shop; a seller’s ranking on one platform offers no predictive value for its performance on the other.

Marketplace Pulse noted in the report that this gap stems from fundamental differences in the two platforms’ core positioning. TikTok’s primary function is to spark unplanned consumer demand, while Amazon serves as the default destination where U.S. consumers finalize purchase decisions. Over 20 years of operation, Amazon’s Prime membership program has cultivated deeply entrenched consumer habits: stored payment credentials, clear delivery guarantees, low-friction return and exchange policies, and a trusted review system collectively create a seamless transaction funnel. Many users who see product demonstrations in TikTok short videos choose to search for the corresponding brand on Amazon to complete their purchase.

This traffic spillover from TikTok to Amazon existed long before the launch of TikTok Shop. For example, in 2021, a pair of leggings that had no embedded product links on TikTok became the top-selling apparel item on Amazon that year, driven solely by search traffic generated by viral content. Afterward, TikTok Shop rolled out a series of features including in-app checkout, fulfillment services, and a creator commission system to keep more transactions within its ecosystem, but the user habit of completing purchases on Amazon has not disappeared. Brands that gain traction through TikTok’s content feed often directly capture organic business growth on Amazon as well.

In contrast, reverse traffic migration is virtually non-existent—almost no consumers will go out of their way to switch to TikTok Shop to complete a purchase after discovering a product on Amazon. Amazon has made multiple attempts to launch content discovery features designed to keep users within the platform for the full journey from product discovery to purchase. For instance, its TikTok-style in-app feed Inspire, launched in 2022 and evolved from the Spark feature first introduced in 2017, was officially shut down in 2025.

Marketplace Pulse emphasized that the operational playbooks for the two platforms cannot be directly replicated. Amazon operations center on search ranking optimization, review accumulation, targeted ad placement, and warehouse inventory planning; top-selling products on the platform are mostly functional, standardized items such as charging cables, storage boxes, and printer paper that users actively search for. Operations on TikTok Shop, by comparison, revolve around products whose use cases and value can be intuitively demonstrated in 15-second short videos. Brands need to treat content as their core operational channel and drive sales through creator affiliate distribution.

For existing Amazon sellers, building a presence on TikTok can boost brand search volume on Amazon. If a product is well-suited for short-form video demonstration, returns on investment in creator partnerships will not only come from TikTok Shop orders, but a large share of gains will accrue to the seller’s Amazon storefront. However, for products that lack inherent content virality, simply listing items on TikTok Shop will not drive meaningful traffic. Going forward, the growth path for emerging direct-to-consumer brands will increasingly follow a pattern of first scaling reach on TikTok, then building long-term, scaled presence across additional sales channels.