Amazon Hopes to ‘Inspire’ Consumers to Shop TikTok-Style

Amazon has begun testing a new app feature that shows customers a video and photo feed of products, similar to the popular video social media platform TikTok.

That’s according to a Wednesday (Aug. 17) report by The Wall Street Journal, which said — according to an unnamed source — that the test is visible to a handful of Amazon employees.

The portal is apparently being tested under the name “Inspire,” and shows up as a diamond-shaped widget on the Amazon app, taking users to a feed with a stream of images and videos of products, with shoppers able to like products, comment on them or buy them immediately, the report said, citing information from Israeli research firm Watchful Technologies.

Inspire “could become the kind of really sticky social media way to browse,” Watchful researcher Daniel Buchuk told the Journal. “It’s a way of adopting a new social experience on the app.”

Reached for comment by PYMNTS, a company spokesperson said that Amazon is “constantly testing new features to help make customers’ lives a little easier.”

Read more: Amazon Lures Influencers to Fire Up Livestream Shopping in US

As PYMNTS reported last month, livestream shopping hasn’t found the type of audience in the U.S. that it has in China. Amazon has said it wants to change that by luring influencers to promote products on its platform.

“Livestream shopping is the future of retail,” Amazon Vice President of Advertising Wayne Purboo said in a Financial Times interview. He oversees Amazon Live, the tech giant’s interactive live video shopping feature.

See also: TikTok Drops Livestream Shopping Plans in US, Europe

TikTok Shop, meanwhile, abandoned plans to expand to the U.S. and European Union after it failed to create an audience in the U.K.