Re: Tiktok International
Keena Wiegert
I know people who scroll through comments all day for comedic purposes as well as to gain information about what others think. It becomes embedded as a rhythm that people look forward to after a long day. I know that I look forward to getting in bed at night and scrolling through YouTube to see new videos uploaded every night.
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This is not to say that internationalization became trivial or inevitable. For many digital firms, issues such as cultural differences, customer preferences, and different languages remained formidable market entry barriers (Shaheer, 2020). However, the open nature of the internet at least allowed digital firms to make their products globally available at minimal costs, which represented a major departure from traditional international business.
Over the past decade, there has been a sharp increase in regulation of the internet, especially with respect to cross-border digital transactions (US International Trade Commission, 2017). By insisting that digital firms follow local rules and respect national policies, governments are effectively restoring the role of national borders in the digital economy. While there are many different motivations for such restrictive measures, four broad concerns account for a large proportion of digital fragmentation: Privacy/data protection, taxation, censorship, and national security.
The growth of the digital economy has fueled concerns about the ability of governments to effectively tax digital transactions, as their intangible nature facilitates tax avoidance (Ting & Gray, 2019). However, facing budget shortfalls and public pressure, governments are intensifying efforts to tax digital transactions. While multilateral proposals under the auspices of the OECD, the EU, and the G20 made little headway, 38 countries had implemented or announced their own national digital taxes by early 2021 (KPMG, 2021). For example, Britain imposed a tax on revenues generated from digital services attributable to British users. It is levied on revenues, rather than profits, to reduce tax avoidance. Like data protection rules, taxation of digital services is not inherently discriminatory against foreign companies, but the development of a nation-based patchwork of digital taxes introduces substantial uncertainty and compliance costs for digital firms seeking to offer their services internationally.
Many other social and economic considerations can motivate policies contributing to digital fragmentation. For example, governments routinely impose sector-specific regulations on industries such as gambling, finance, or healthcare. Moreover, the official policy objective may serve as a disguise for protectionist measures designed to shield domestic companies from foreign competition.
A central concept in international business is the tension between global standardization and local adaptation. Global standardization, i.e., offering the same product in all markets, minimizes complexity and reduces costs. This strategy is especially attractive for digital firms because digital products generally exhibit economies of scale (once developed, they can serve any number of users at minimal marginal cost). However, the fragmentation of the internet forces firms to adapt their products for different countries, limiting their ability to reap the benefits of standardization. To meet legal obligations and social expectations in foreign markets, digital firms often need revise not just consumer-facing aspects of their products (e.g., content, user interfaces) but also back-end processes and business models, for example with respect to data collection, storage, and monetization. The cost of complying with foreign regulations such as GDPR can amount to millions of dollars per company (PWC, 2018). In addition to one-off adaptation costs, the need for ongoing monitoring of evolving legal frameworks in multiple countries adds to the cost (monetary and in terms of management attention) of operating internationally, which can impose a substantial burden on smaller startups.
Despite increasing digital fragmentation, it would be a mistake to treat countries as if they were completely independent. Information eventually spreads around the world through digital and other channels. This creates additional challenges for digital firms as they must navigate diverging regulations and social expectations in multiple countries, without alienating stakeholders elsewhere. For example, the communication platform Zoom became the target of international criticism for complying with Chinese censorship requests, both inside and outside of China (Mozur, 2020). Conflicting laws with respect to free speech, privacy rights and the banning of objectional content will inevitably lead to disputes. This is further complicated by disagreements over the territorial reach of many internet-related regulations: Can a French regulator force Google to remove a search result from the non-French versions of its search engine? Can authoritarian governments enforce censorship outside of their national borders? Digital firms operating internationally will face intense scrutiny and will need to manage these tensions carefully.
Max Stallkamp is an Assistant Professor of Management at Virginia Tech. He received his PhD from the Ivey Business School at Western University, Canada. His research examines the internationalization of firms, with an emphasis on digital and technology ventures, and has been published in the Journal of International Business Studies, Global Strategy Journal, and the Journal of Management Studies.
TikTok, known as Douyin in its home market, was launched in China in September 2016. It quickly started to gain traction in China and parent company ByteDance launched an international version the following year.
Originally launched as a short-form video sharing platform, primarily for lipsyncing and dancing videos, TikTok has grown into a fully-fledged video service, with content available for all types of viewers.
A potential widescale ban on TikTok in the West will have implications for educators and agents that have come to rely heavily on the channel for student recruitment. Young people aged 18-24 are the demographic that is most likely to be using TikTok.
For international marketing teams at schools and universities, TikTok is especially relevant because international students from key emerging markets use it to research study abroad options and share recommendations and experiences. This graph from Statista indicates the countries in which TikTok has the highest penetration. Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Vietnam, Philippines, and Thailand are priority source countries for many educators in 2023.
So far in the West, TikTok is banned on government-owned/linked devices in Canada, many EU countries, and the UK. In the US, legislation around TikTok is currently happening at the state, rather than federal, level. More than two dozen states have banned the app on government devices, and many universities have blocked it from campus Wi-Fi networks (however, students can work around this by accessing TikTok using cellular data).
TikTok is banned much more comprehensively in India. The Indian government banned it completely in the country in 2020 due to security concerns, which led to a surge in downloads and use of Instagram.
It took a while for college and university marketers to understand how to leverage TikTok, and often with the help of student social media ambassadors. For schools that have become successful on the app, a potential banning of TikTok is unfortunate, not the least because so many students are on TikTok and not on other social media platforms. Hubspot reports:
Instagram's Reels does not yet boast the engagement levels of TikTok, and it is less effective for brands with relatively small follower counts. But it is a good investment for schools and universities that do have a strong presence on Instagram, especially given uncertainty around what governments will decide about TikTok.
Whatever happens to TikTok, this is the time to lean into customer engagement and to invest in building brand loyalty on social media platforms. An essential activity is providing incentives for your student audience to provide their emails. AdRoll elaborates:
TikTok, with more than 1.7 billion monthly active users, is undeniably one of the most popular and fastest-growing applications in the last few years. The service grew its roots from being a short-video-creating application to providing its users with a platform for digital shopping. However, while its digital shopping realm is already top-notch, the service understands the growing needs of users to receive their packages blazing fast.
TikTok Shipping is a platform that provides users with a seamless platform to purchase products directly from multiple sellers across the globe through the application. The best part? The service also provides a secure international transaction, and hence, you will not have to worry about falling into a pit of fraud.
The most significant benefit users can avail of through TikTok Global Shipping is the ability to purchase unique items from various countries that are not readily available in their local market. Hence, making purchases and getting items that you like on the app from anywhere in the world and receiving them at your doorstep has become so much easier.
Apart from its exceptional ability to provide a wide variety of products, TikTok provides both its sellers ease in selling through the different types of TikTok shipping it offers as well. Want to know more about these types of TikTok Shipping? We have you covered on this below.
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