Make three slides for the following text that will take roughly 3 minutes to present: Also give me a script to read. “Global Social Commerce Trend
According to a report by eMarketer, the global social commerce market is expected to grow from $492 billion in 2021 to $1,2 trillion by 2025. This indicates that the market is both big and rapidly increasing. In fact, the social commerce market is estimated to grow three times the speed of the traditional e-commerce market during this period (Insider Intelligence, 2023). The high growth may not seem as surprising when taking into consideration how many potential customers there are on the market. According to Statista, there were 4.59 billion social media users worldwide in 2022, and this number is expected to reach 5.42 billion by 2025 (Dixon, 2023). Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok have an enormous user base all over the globe, making them an attractive option for businesses to promote and sell their products. 
While social commerce was a big phenomenon previous to the COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic accelerated the growth even further. With lockdowns and social distancing measures in place, more consumers have turned to online shopping, including social commerce. The growth of all types e-commerce was analyzed to be accelerated the equivalent of a projected 5 years growth in the first year of the pandemic alone. As social commerce was part in that big leap, many consumers formed the habit of shopping on social media during the pandemic (Hutchinson, 2021). 
The trends and use of social commerce is rather different around the world. Thus we will focus on the different markets separately. Thus we will dive deeper into the social commerce trends in the three regions with the biggest social commerce markets. (Fortune Business Insights, 2022)
Asia-Pacific:
The Asia-Pacific region is on the cutting edge of social commerce development. 49% of the world’s social commerce sales were generated in the Asia-Pacific region, primarily driven by China (Fortune Business Insights, 2022). China is the undisputed leader in social commerce. The social medias used in china differ quite a lot from social media platforms used in other countries, which also changes how social commerce is used. In China there are several examples of e-commerce sites that successfully implements social features rather than the other way around, such as XiaoHongShu (Schaffer, 2022) and Alibaba with Taobao. These are primarily e-commerce sites that also future livestreaming, e-commerce, and community-building. However, some large social media platforms in China such as WeChat are also offering social commerce by utilizing mini-apps to enable consumers to shop directly from their feeds (Schaffer, 2022). In China, live commerce is a big trend and can be seen as a subset of social commerce. This is when influential people livestream on platforms such as Taobao and encourage their followers to purchase the showcased products directly from the site. (McKinsey, 2021) In addition to China, several other Asian countries are embracing social commerce. In India the social commerce market is expected to grow by 71,5% annually. Similar to China, social commerce is big on platforms that are unique to the country, for example, Meesho (Research and Markets, 2022). Also, Thailand has a large market for social commerce which will be discussed more in detail in a later section. 
North America:
In North America, social commerce is much smaller than in Asia-Pacific, however, rapidly growing. Social commerce sales are projected to represent 5% of total e-commerce sales in the US market in 2025. Meanwhile, in China, 13% of total e-commerce sales came from social commerce already in 2021. Considering the success of social commerce in China, and that the conversion rate has been up to ten times as high as with traditional e-commerce, different actors in North America are making efforts to introduce social commerce to the region (McKinsey, 2022). 
Platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest have introduced shopping features to enable consumers to purchase products directly from their feeds. For instance, Instagram which is one of the major social media platforms in North America introduced the shop button in Novermber 2021 (Hart, 2022). In North America, the trend seems to be that e-commerce features, such as shop buttons related to posts, are added to existing large social media platforms. 
However, a reason why these efforts have not yet achieved the same level of success as in Asia could be due to the large entrenched power of e-commerce platforms such as Amazon. Amazon is very much a pure e-commerce platform with limited social features. In December they introduced a social commerce feature called “Inspire” which was a feed combining short videos with shopping. It was introduced as late as of December 2022 (Marketplace Pulse, 2022) and has not seen any major traction so far.
A second reason why social commerce still has not seen the same breakthrough in the North American market could be due to the lack of live commerce efforts, which is a big part of social commerce in Asia. In China, 10% of all e-commerce sales comes from live commerce, and thus makes up the majority share of the social commerce market. Major american brands such as Walmart and Tommy Hilfiger have had live streaming events on social platforms. However, there is no big platform in the North American market directly focused on live commerce (McKinsey, 2021). 
Europe:
The European social commerce market is very similar to the one in the North American market. This is because most European countries resort to similar social media platforms as consumers in North America. Thus, the spread of social commerce in Europe is very much dependent upon the moves of major actors such as Facebook, Instagram, Pintrest and Twitter. Similar to the North American market, popular platforms such as Instagram and Facebook are introducing shopping functions in the European market. 
In conclusion, the global trends in social commerce demonstrate a rapidly growing market with significant regional variations. The Asia-Pacific region, and particularly China, leads the way in social commerce development, driven by unique platforms, live commerce, and a blend of e-commerce and social features. China’s success in social commerce can be attributed to its innovative integration of live streaming, community-building, and in-app shopping experiences in both e-commerce and social media platforms. In contrast, the North American and European markets have mainly focused on integrating parts of these social commerce features into existing social media platforms. The question now remains whether the large success of social commerce can have the same success in other markets than China. This makes the case of Thailand an interesting example.”