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Social media was once a place to browse, scroll, and be inspired. Today, it's where billions of pounds change hands, and for independent retailers across the UK, understanding this shift is no longer optional. It's survival.
Speaking at Spring Fair 2026, Alison Battisby, founder of social media consultancy Avocado Social, delivered a session that stopped the room. Her message was clear: social commerce is not a trend on the horizon, it's already here, it's accelerating, and retailers who ignore it risk being left behind.
What Is Social Commerce, and Why Does It Matter?
Social commerce is the integration of shopping directly into social media platforms. Rather than a customer seeing a product on Instagram and having to navigate away to a website, they can now browse, evaluate, and purchase, all without ever leaving the app.
"It all makes scrolling and messaging in social media directly shoppable," Alison explained. And the numbers back this up in a big way.
According to Emarketer, social commerce sales in the UK are predicted to approach £12 billion in 2026, having nearly quadrupled since 2023. Social shopping has jumped 32% since 2022, driven largely by Gen Z and millennials for whom in-app purchasing feels completely natural. Perhaps most striking: 56% of UK users have now bought directly through a social platform, and 69% report making a purchase after first discovering a product through social media.
TikTok: The Fastest Growing Retail Channel You're Probably Underusing
If there is one platform defining social commerce right now, it is TikTok. There are now over 200,000 UK sellers on TikTok Shop, ranging from household names like M&S to small independent businesses selling hot sauce from a spare bedroom.
Two strategies are driving results:
Live Shopping: a QVC-style format where sellers go live, interact with viewers in real time, and offer time-sensitive deals. Alison highlighted a Welsh beauty brand, Mallow's Beauty, that reportedly makes £5,000 a day through TikTok Live, running sessions in shifts around the clock. "It's not for the faint-hearted," she admitted, "but it is incredibly effective."
Affiliates: TikTok's term for influencers who earn commission on sales. Four in five TikTok users discover brands through peer recommendations, and the affiliate programme enables creators to embed shoppable product links directly into their videos. For sustainable retailers in particular, affiliates offer an authentic route to audiences who care about brand story and values, not just price.
The key insight? For products under £100, TikTok can drive impulse purchases from customers who have never heard of your brand before. For higher ticket items, brand awareness work must come first before the sale will follow.
Instagram: Premium Feel, Partnership Power
Instagram may no longer support in-app checkout in the UK (a change made last year), but it remains a powerful discovery and conversion tool, particularly for retailers in fashion and interiors.
The format that Alison was most emphatic about? Partnership ads. This is where an influencer creates content featuring your product, you allow them to be listed as a collaborator, and you then turn that content into a paid ad. "It's not you as a business saying 'buy us, we're amazing', you're relying on other people's recommendations, which is far more trustworthy," she said.
Carousels, reels, and story content all outperform single static images on Instagram right now. The platform rewards authenticity and aesthetic quality.
YouTube: The Overlooked Long Game
YouTube may feel like an older platform, but its relevance for retail, especially in ecommerce tech news and considered-purchase categories, is quietly growing.
75% of social searchers use YouTube more than any other platform, and 45% of UK beauty shoppers head there first for product research. Unboxing videos, how-to guides, and product reviews perform exceptionally well, and YouTube is now rolling out shoppable video tags that allow viewers to click directly through to product pages without leaving the platform.
For retailers with products that need a little explanation, think garden equipment, wellness tools, or home appliances, YouTube is a channel worth serious consideration, especially as part of an always-on content strategy.
WhatsApp: The Commerce Platform Nobody Saw Coming
It may surprise many retailers to learn that WhatsApp, the UK's most used social platform, is increasingly being classified as a social commerce channel.
Brands are using WhatsApp Business in two key ways: customer service chatbots that respond to shopping queries with product links, and broadcast channels that send alerts about new products, promotions, or seasonal content to subscribers who have opted in.
"I know quite a few businesses trialling manual customer service through WhatsApp," said Alison. "They've set up a WhatsApp Business account, they're promoting it on their website, and they're just monitoring how many questions come in." For independent retailers who value close customer relationships, WhatsApp offers an intimate, low-noise channel for nurturing those connections throughout the year.
Meet Customers Where They Are
Alison closed with a challenge. Too many retailers, she argued, are still using five-year-old social strategies, posting a product image and hoping for clicks. That approach no longer works.
"People want to see what your product looks like actually being used by creators. They want to see reviews. They want to buy into your brand. They want to know the story of your founder and your products."
For UK independent retailers, whether you run a bricks-and-mortar shop, or operate an online store, the path forward involves three things: building a creator ecosystem, making your social content as shoppable as possible, and using platform data to understand exactly who is engaging with you and why.
Social commerce isn't face-to-face discovery. If anything, channels like TikTok and Instagram are amplifying the value of events like Spring Fair and Autumn Fair by warming up audiences before they arrive and sustaining relationships long after the show closes.
The brands winning in 2026 are those treating social not as a broadcast channel, but as a living, shoppable community. The invisible influence is already at work, the question is whether your business is part of it.
Want to explore more about how digital tools are shaping independent retail? Read our guides on social media for retail, ecommerce tech news, and the latest retail trade news on the Inside Retail hub.
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