Indonesia is the largest TikTok Shop market in the world. But because it is crowded, picking the wrong product is the fastest way to burn your budget. This guide covers how to research products that actually sell, from the metrics that matter to doing it at scale.
Why product research decides everything
Many sellers and dropshippers start from “a product that looks cool” instead of from demand data. The result is dead stock and wasted ad spend. Product research flips the order: first find what is already proven to sell, then decide what to list.
What a winning product looks like (the metrics)
1. Units sold
The most honest number. TikTok Shop shows “X sold” on every product. Thousands sold signals real demand. Even better if you can track this number over time to estimate daily sales velocity.
2. Rating and review count
High sales with a low rating is a trap: many buy, many are disappointed, returns pile up. Aim for a rating above 4.7 with a large number of reviews so you know quality is consistent.
3. Price and margin room
Record both the sale price and the original price. Mid-range products usually have the best balance of volume and margin. Avoid products where big sellers have already crushed the price.
4. Trend and seasonality
Viral products can spike and fade fast. Separate stable demand (daily essentials, beauty, home) from seasonal spikes that disappear quickly.
5. Competition level
If a keyword is already dominated by a handful of large stores with hundreds of thousands of sales, a newcomer will struggle. Look for the gap: best-sellers where the seller list is still thin.
Manual research (and its limits)
Open TikTok Shop Indonesia, go into your target category, and browse products one by one while noting units sold, rating, and price. This is free and good for getting a feel of the market.
The limits are obvious: it is slow, tiring, and you only see a small slice of products. You cannot compare hundreds of products at once, and you cannot sort an entire category by units sold.
Research at scale with data
For serious decisions you need the data as a table. The idea is simple: collect the products of one or more categories at once, then filter and sort in a spreadsheet.
The workflow:
- Export products from your target category (price, units sold, rating, seller).
- Keep only products above a sales threshold, for example 1,000 sold.
- Filter again for a minimum rating of 4.7.
- Sort by units sold to see the top winners.
- Check the sellers: many small shops in the list means the opening is still there.
For this step I built the TikTok Shop Indonesia Scraper, a tool that exports hundreds of products with price, units sold, rating, and seller into JSON, CSV, or Excel, with best-seller filters built in. You analyze in a spreadsheet instead of clicking all day.
Advanced tips
- Track over time. A single export is a snapshot. Weekly exports reveal which products are rising, not just which are already big.
- Read the winners’ detail pages. Open the product page to read reviews and variants. Repeated complaints are an idea for a better product.
- Compare across categories. Margin and competition differ a lot between fashion, beauty, and home goods.
Conclusion
Winning products are not a guess; they come from data: units sold, rating, price, trend, and competition. Start with manual research to learn the market, then move to data at scale when you get serious. Whoever reads the market first, wins first.