Shoppertainment Nation: Inside Vietnam’s Livestream Commerce Rush and the Vietnam Livestream E-commerce Boom

Vietnam’s online retail story is increasingly written in video. Industry outlooks put Vietnam’s e-commerce market at US$26–28 billion in 2025, and the momentum is visible on the biggest platforms. Combined sales on Vietnam’s four largest e-commerce platforms—Shopee, TikTok Shop, Lazada, and Tiki—reached US$11.62 billion in the first nine months of 2025, up 34.4% year on year. This is the backdrop for the Vietnam livestream e-commerce boom: shopping is becoming entertainment, and entertainment is becoming the storefront. Mordor Intelligence also frames the market’s scale-up with a separate estimate that Vietnam e-commerce is expected to grow from USD 27.73 billion in 2025 to USD 33.57 billion in 2026, with digital commerce at about 9% of total retail sales.

Consumer behavior is already aligned with the new format. One retail trends survey reports that 63% of Vietnamese consumers participate in livestream shopping on formats such as Shopee Live and TikTok Shop Live, while 53% use shoppable videos. That level of participation helps explain why “shoppertainment”—the blend of shopping and entertainment—keeps showing up as a growth driver in multiple Vietnam market commentaries. It also shapes category playbooks. Live commerce research in Vietnam lists Fashion & Apparel and Beauty & Personal Care as particularly popular, citing their visual appeal and the influence of social media trends. The same live commerce market view values Vietnam’s live commerce market at approximately USD 4 billion and highlights how smartphone penetration, internet connectivity, and social and integrated platforms are pulling more demand into live formats.

Why Platforms Are Fighting for Every View—and Every Checkout

The platform battle is not just about price and logistics. It is also about attention and conversion inside content feeds. In H1 2025, Vietnam’s e-commerce platforms generated VND 222.1 trillion (about US$8.49 billion) in GMV, growing around 23.1% year on year. Within that, TikTok Shop’s GMV surged 148% year on year in H1 2025 and was reported at about 42% market share, overtaking other platforms in the market. Another platform snapshot cited by Metric shows Shopee leading with a 56% share, while TikTok Shop expanded to 41% share, narrowing the gap as its year-on-year growth reached 69% and Shopee’s growth slowed to 4% in Q3 2025. These figures signal an arms race in creator-led selling, livestream scheduling, and shoppable short video.

Payments and trust are another lever pushing video commerce from “fun” into “default.” Under Vietnam’s National Cashless Payment Development Project 2021–2025, card-less transactions soared 63.3% in volume and 41.45% in value in early 2024, while QR code usage leapt nearly ten-fold. Retail acceptance is increasingly common, with 79% of food-service outlets and 74% of stores offering digital options. Mordor Intelligence also notes how rising trust in cash-free payments and the expansion of social commerce and short-video content turn product discovery into entertainment. In its 2025 segmentation, smartphones captured a 71.10% revenue share of Vietnam’s e-commerce market, and credit and debit cards held 29.40% share—signals that the commerce stack is already mobile-led as livestream shopping scales.

What emerges is a market that is consolidating around formats that reward scale, consistency, and credibility. One Vietnam e-commerce commentary notes that even as the number of shops on platforms decreased, the average revenue per shop increased 27.6%, suggesting consumers are leaning toward larger sellers and genuine stores. That dynamic fits “shoppertainment” economics: always-on content, influencer partnerships, and rapid response to audience questions tend to favor organized operators. For brands and merchants, Vietnam’s live commerce landscape includes integrated marketplaces and social and short-video platforms, plus brand-owned sites and apps. The result is a fast-moving retail environment where livestreaming and shoppable video are scaling faster than physical store networks, and where strategy increasingly starts with content—then moves to checkout.