How Retailers Can Adapt to Shifting Consumer Shopping Habits Using TikTok Shop & DTC Data

Retail has always moved quickly, but TikTok Shop shows just how fast consumer behavior can change today. Shoppers aren’t just browsing on TikTok. They are discovering, deciding, and buying, often within minutes of seeing a product. For retailers, this shift means the old way of relying on historical sales data, sometimes six months or more out of date, isn’t enough to keep up.

TikTok Shop Data: A Real-Time View of Consumer Demand

TikTok Shop is no longer just a hub for impulse buys, it’s become a powerful engine for ongoing, steady purchases. Every scroll, like, and share influences what ends up in shopping carts. This creates an invaluable dataset for retailers: a real-time pulse on what consumers are excited about and willing to spend money on.

With TikTok Shop data, retailers can track:

• Hashtag trends to identify emerging cultural moments and product opportunities before they peak.
• Creator-level performance to understand which influencers are truly driving conversions.
• Top-selling categories, shops, and products to see what’s moving the needle right now.

Instead of waiting for outdated in-store reports, retailers can use these insights to adjust their merchandising and assortment strategies in real time, stocking what shoppers are already buying and avoiding slow-moving bets.

Using TikTok Shop Data to Guide Merchandising

Use Hashtags to See What is Trending

One of the clearest trend signals in TikTok Shop data comes from hashtags. Purchases associated with the hashtag #koreanskincare, for example, pulled in more than $40 million in revenue from January to August 2025.

For retailers, tracking these high-volume hashtags, especially ones that are driving consistent views and revenue over time, can reveal which products should be stocked at their stores.

Track Emerging Trends to Stay Ahead of the Competition

Retailers can get ahead of trends by keeping tabs on emerging trends. The hashtag #peachfuzzremover had minimal views and revenue through 2025 until it spiked up to 2.8 million views in July 2025 alone. 

Retailers who recognize these emerging trends can introduce new SKUs that meet targeted needs and capture additional revenue opportunities before competitors do.

Analyze Creator Strategies to Inform Marketing & Product Selection

TikTok creators are playing a central role in driving sales. Oftentimes, we’ve seen that the more creators there are promoting the product, the more sales that product has. By analyzing content among top influencers driving revenue for brands, retailers can see what exactly is appealing to consumers about a product. For example, is a viral creator video highlighting the lipstick’s color or the way that it goes on smoothly? 

Charm is the only platform that ties these social listening insights to actual revenue, so you can see exactly what social content and trends are translating into sales.

Use Data on Top-Selling Categories, Shops, and Products to Make Merchandising Decisions 

By analyzing top-selling categories, shops, and products, retailers can gain insights into what is selling among consumers and how they should stock their shelves accordingly. The top-selling product category on TikTok Shop right now is beauty and personal care. From January through August 2025, the category has driven over $1.4B in U.S. TikTok Shop sales. The top-selling beauty shop during this time is Tarte Cosmetics at $53M in sales, while the top-selling beauty product is Dr.Melaxin’s Peel Shot Glow Rice Ampoule Duo.

For beauty retailers, this information is crucial to understanding what consumers are purchasing, so they can adjust their product assortment accordingly and ensure they match their catalog to what shoppers are buying right now.

Retailers Need to Partner with the Right DTC Brands to Drive Sales

While TikTok Shop reveals what’s selling today, retailers also need to know which brands are built for long-term success and that they should be offering at their organizations.

There are millions of DTC brands, and more emerge every day. Smart retailers need to use data to understand which DTC brands are right for their stores and which ones will be proven to drive long-term success.

With DTC data from Charm, retailers can see:

• Demographic fit: Find the brands that match your current audience’s age, gender, and geography (or find the best brand to partner with to tap into a new demographic audience).
• Growth & Success: Use the Charm Growth Score and Charm Success Score to analyze their overall growth and success (compared to other brands) based on social reach, website traffic, advertising, distribution, and more. 
• Revenue & Funding Insights: Understand if a brand is reaching your revenue and funding expectations to show its overall success.

This data helps retailers evaluate whether a brand is the right partner before bringing it into their assortment.

The brand En Route Jewlery, is a great example of a fast-growing jewelry brand. With a growth score of 86.22, we know it’s growing faster than 86% of other brands in the apparel and accessories category. 

With a majority female audience, this brand would be a good fit for retailers looking to continue to offer products to women. Their media price is $28.00, and retailers can use that information to match their desired price point for products.

With in-depth DTC insights like these, retailers can rely on data (and not guesswork) to partner with brands that would be a good fit for their stores.

Use DTC & TikTok Shop Data for a Smarter Retail Strategy

TikTok has shortened the product discovery cycle to seconds, and retailers can’t afford to move slowly. Partnering with proven DTC brands while using TikTok Shop data to track what’s trending allows them to adapt in real time.

TikTok Shop data and D2C brand data together give retailers the most complete picture of consumer behavior:

• What’s selling now (TikTok Shop insights)
• Which brands are worth betting on (DTC brand analysis)

The combination allows retailers to move beyond guesswork. They can both react quickly to emerging trends and make confident long-term decisions about which brands to partner with or promote.

Those who combine both signals, long-term brand health and short-term sales velocity, will make sharper assortment decisions and build stronger shopper connections.

Charm helps retailers fine-tune product assortments, decide which SKUs to test in-store, and spot emerging trends that could translate into long-term opportunities. Book a demo with Charm today and see how you can turn real-time audience and sales data into your competitive advantage.