Social commerce strategy is becoming an increasingly important consideration for multinational companies as they invest in dedicated teams, expand content operations, and build affiliate networks to capture new commercial opportunities.
TikTok Shop is a particularly visible example. What once might have been treated as an extension of e-commerce now requires a more specialised operating model, bringing together content, creators, media, and commercial execution.
The investment raises an interesting question: when a channel is growing rapidly but its economics remain uncertain, how much investment can that growth justify?
The answer is not necessarily to invest less. Nor is it to assume that early growth will eventually translate into attractive returns.
To understand the decisions companies are making, we need to separate three things: the commercial opportunity a channel presents, the capabilities required to capture it, and the economic value those capabilities ultimately create.
The opportunity extends beyond the transaction
Social commerce can bring product discovery and purchase closer together.
A consumer may encounter a product through a creator, discover a use they had not previously considered, and purchase it without leaving the platform. Unlike channels that primarily respond to existing purchase intent, social commerce can also help generate that intent.
Its commercial value may therefore extend beyond the transactions recorded directly on the platform.
A consumer who discovers a product on TikTok may eventually buy it through a marketplace, a retailer, or another established channel. This creates a potential cross-channel effect that a platform’s direct sales figures may not fully capture.
In an interview about Unilever Benelux’s TikTok Shop rollout, Akila Ksatryo, Retail Media Specialist at Unilever Benelux, described TikTok as a platform that can both create and convert demand. He argued that its role extends beyond direct checkout because consumers may discover products on TikTok but complete their purchases elsewhere .
This offers a plausible commercial rationale for investing in the channel, even when direct platform profitability is not yet established.
But the distinction matters: a potential source of value is not the same as a demonstrated financial return.
Cross-channel effects need to be measured. Otherwise, a company risks attributing strategic value to activity that may simply have shifted sales between channels, rather than generated incremental demand.
The opportunity may be broader than the transaction. Establishing its actual value is a separate task.
Building the channel means building an operating model
Capturing this opportunity requires more than opening a digital storefront.
Social commerce can involve continuous content production, creator and affiliate management, paid media, promotional planning, assortment decisions, fulfilment, and performance measurement. These activities need to work together to turn attention into commercially valuable demand.
The pace also matters. Content needs to be tested, consumer responses can change quickly, and the operating model may require faster coordination than traditional corporate structures are designed to support.
Unilever’s reported activity in Vietnam illustrates the scale involved. The company reported that social commerce sales across its portfolio in Vietnam grew more than fourfold in the first quarter of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier. It also reported that each of its Personal Care brands in Vietnam produced more than 500 social content assets per week.
These figures indicate reported growth and the intensity of content operations. They do not establish the channel’s profitability, the absolute scale of sales, or how much of the growth was incremental.
The organisational investment is visible elsewhere, too. Social Commerce Manager job descriptions from Nestlé and P&G in Vietnam include responsibilities for scaling TikTok Shop, improving return on advertising spend, growing affiliate-driven sales, and developing internal capabilities. A role advertised by Haleon also identifies GMV, revenue, margin, and investment effectiveness as areas of accountability.
These descriptions suggest that companies are treating social commerce as a specialised commercial operation, not simply a content initiative.
That distinction helps explain the investment. Companies are not only funding activity on a platform; they are building the capabilities required to operate within it.
But building those capabilities comes at a cost. And the ability to scale an operation does not, by itself, establish that scaling it is economically attractive.
Growth and profitability answer different questions
A channel can grow quickly without delivering an equally attractive economic return.
GMV may increase while affiliate commissions, media spending, promotions, and fulfilment costs put pressure on margins. Sales attributed to a platform may also include purchases that would otherwise have occurred through another channel.
None of this means that social commerce is inherently unprofitable. It means that topline growth alone cannot determine whether the investment creates value.
Unilever Benelux offers a useful illustration of this tension.
In discussing the company’s TikTok Shop rollout, Ksatryo estimated that the first year might not be profitable for many brands, with margins potentially turning positive in the second or third year. He also described how platform fees and affiliate commissions could put substantial pressure on gross margin before fulfilment costs were considered.
These are interview-based estimates and expectations, not audited financial results or a universal assessment of TikTok Shop economics. Nevertheless, they highlight a familiar challenge in building a new commercial channel: the business may need to invest before its operating model becomes economically attractive.
That can be a rational decision. Initial investment may support learning, capability development, and operational improvements that take time to produce results.
The critical question is what will make the economics improve.
Will customer acquisition become more efficient? Will the business develop a more effective affiliate mix? Will content production generate better returns as the team learns what works? Will the channel create incremental demand that can be captured profitably?
Each explanation implies a different investment logic—and requires different evidence.
Without that clarity, an expectation of future profitability risks becoming a reason to continue investing rather than a hypothesis the business actively tests.
Strategic relevance does not justify every investment
When a channel becomes commercially significant, participating may be strategically sensible even before its economics are fully established.
Staying out also carries potential costs. A company may miss opportunities to understand changing consumer behaviour, develop new capabilities, or build relationships with creators and platform partners.
But deciding to participate is not the same as deciding how much to invest.
These are three separate decisions.
Whether to participate: Is the channel sufficiently relevant to the company’s customers, categories, and commercial strategy to warrant a presence?
How to participate: What operating model and capabilities are required to capture the opportunity?
How much to invest: What level of investment can the available evidence justify?
The first decision concerns strategic relevance. The second concerns operational design. The third requires an assessment of economic value.
A channel may be strategically relevant without every activity within it being worthwhile. A business may need to invest to understand a new channel without scaling every investment immediately. And a channel may generate substantial revenue without producing enough incremental profit to justify its full cost.
This is not an argument for demanding immediate profitability from every new initiative. Such a requirement could prevent companies from developing capabilities that take time to mature.
It is an argument for making the investment logic explicit.
If a company is investing ahead of profitability, what does it expect to learn or establish? Which assumptions underpin the expected improvement? What evidence would justify increasing investment, and what would trigger a reassessment?
These questions do not eliminate uncertainty. They help determine how much uncertainty the business is willing to fund.
The discipline is in knowing what the evidence justifies
Public information offers only a partial view of how multinational companies make these decisions.
Company announcements can reveal reported growth. Job descriptions can show the commercial responsibilities assigned to dedicated teams. Interviews can provide insight into operating challenges and expectations about profitability.
But these sources do not reveal the full process behind budget approvals, the thresholds used to scale investment, or how companies measure the incremental contribution of social commerce across channels.
It would therefore be premature to conclude that MNCs are simply chasing topline growth at the expense of profitability. Their investment decisions may reflect strategic considerations that are not visible in public disclosures.
The opposite conclusion would be equally premature: strong growth and increased organisational commitment do not automatically establish an attractive economic opportunity.
A channel can be strategically relevant. An operating model can become scalable. Yet neither condition guarantees that the resulting growth will generate sufficient economic value.
Companies do not need complete certainty before investing in a new channel. Commercial decisions are rarely made with perfect information. But when the economics remain uncertain, the distinction between observed results, expected improvements, and demonstrated returns becomes especially important.
The question is not simply whether social commerce deserves investment.
It is how much investment the available evidence can justify—and what a company needs to learn before committing more.
