TikTok Shop is turning over billions of dollars in sales each year, but what if Gen Z is on the road to preferring another ecommerce channel?
The Retail Technology Show, a London exhibition founded in 2021, collected data from 1,000 Gen Z shoppers and found that on average, they made 20 purchases on Roblox within the last 12 months. That’s a 54% year over year growth from Gen Z Roblox purchases made in 2025, RTS said.
Roblox purchases across all age groups rose 31% over the last year, it added.
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Now, this doesn’t mean that Gen Z is shopping more on Roblox than on TikTok. RTS’s data showed that in the last 12 months, Gen Z consumers made an average of 23 purchases on TikTok, edging out the 20 on Roblox.
What RTS focused on with its data is that those 23 purchases indicate only a 10% year over year growth in Gen Z TikTok shopping from 2025. That’s far below the 54% jump Roblox saw.
“Gen Z may soon move on from their ‘TikTok made me buy it’ era as purchase growth on Roblox across physical and digital products continues to put on pace,” Matt Bradley, RTS’s Founder & Event Director, said in a statement. “While many may have previously pigeon-holed Roblox as a metaverse-dependent channel, its resurgence is gaining new momentum. Underpinned by peer-to-peer engagement–something which is declining on other platforms–Roblox’ renewed commercial success is being driven by a sense of community and digital self-expression.”
We don’t know that this data quite so firmly indicates Gen Z may “move on” from TikTok Shop. On paper, both TikTok and Roblox offer marketplaces where kids and teens can spend their money. But in practice, they’re pretty different: Roblox targets gamers and sells digital items like avatar and weapon skins, while TikTok targets anyone and everyone with a wallet (or a parent’s wallet) and sells a vast variety of physical products, from snacks to toys to cosmetics, books, and even luxury handbags.
That being said, Roblox is experimenting with selling physical products (while TikTok doesn’t sell digital merch equivalent to what Roblox offers), so RTS’s data could indicate it’ll have a strong showing once it gets more ecommerce offerings online.
(Also worth mentioning: RTS pulled data for Whatnot as well, and found that Gen Z’ers are the most frequent buyers on the app, with an average of 16 orders per year. Data showed first-time buyers on Whatnot grew 374% in 2025, and women’s fashion streams now bring more than 500,000 view hours per month. We’ve seen Whatnot around in the creator community for a while, but it’s swinging big now thanks to a new partnership with MrBeast.)
At this juncture, we don’t know that Roblox will overtake the social selling juggernaut that is TikTok Shop–but with Gen Alpha being even more online than Gen Z, it’s possible that Roblox could become a rival marketplace with a digital edge over Shop.
