Although TikTok may not be the first place that comes to mind when shopping for supplements, the social platform is increasingly becoming a go-to source for many Americans seeking to learn about and buy supplements.
Within the past year or two, social commerce has driven such notable increases in supplement trends and sales that it has become a channel that’s impossible to ignore. To wit, Nutrition Business Journal recently set out to track social commerce for the first time. Slotting in as an e-commerce subset—and bringing $1.01 billion with it in 2025—social commerce helped push e-commerce channel revenue to $18.70 billion last year, according to estimates in the first-ever NBJ Social Commerce Report.
Since there’s not yet an agreed-upon definition for social commerce, our first step was determining one that made sense for this report. For the market-sizing data, we chose this: Social commerce is any social platform with native (in-app) checkout capability. Currently, only TikTok Shop, which officially launched in September 2023, meets our definition. In addition to the detailed TikTok-specific data, the NBJ Social Commerce Report provides broader insights on ingredient, product and sales trends and behaviors across consumers whose supplement purchases are influenced by social media.
For instance, NBJ surveys found that most consumers buy the same brand they’ve seen featured in social media content, showing strong brand influence and social media’s power to drive brand awareness and sales velocity. That holds even when a majority of “socially influenced” shoppers end up buying on Amazon, Target or another retailer.
With sales on TikTok Shop alone already representing 5.4% of the e-commerce channel and 1.4% of the industry overall, it’s clear that social commerce will get bigger as more brands join and more shoppers get comfortable shopping on social media apps on a regular basis.
In a rapidly changing digital world, it’s impossible to know exactly how these channels develop over time. But for the foreseeable future, social commerce presents an opportunity for brands to meet consumers where they are and engage them with storytelling that focuses on clear benefits—and evidence—for addressing common health concerns like gut health, stress, sleep, energy, healthy aging and skin, hair and nails.
Take a deep dive into today’s supplement market with Nutrition Business Journal’s Social Commerce Report.
