Community Validation is the new Marketing Funnel !
China is still a great place to look into the future. Good proof for this is the new Trend Report from The New Consumer about the beauty sector, because it shows that many of the tactics we've seen succeed in China 🇨🇳 seem to work in Western markets too:
Here are 4 key insights from the report:
TikTok Shop brings genuine discovery-driven e-commerce to Western markets, and consumers respond well when it's implemented properly.
Video content has become central to the e-commerce experience, transforming how products are discovered and evaluated.
Social media is overtaking Google as consumers shift their search behavior away from traditional search engines toward social platforms.
Consumers want authentic discussions, not shiny content pieces and they look for it in social media: user reviews, trusted influencer try-ons, and unfiltered comments from fellow customers.
What we're witnessing in the West is the emergence of a reality that has been normal in China for years: consumers discover new products on social media, find opinions, reviews and tips from fellow users, discuss everything and in the end even buy it directly there. TikTok Shop is the first platform in the West to offer the complete experience.
What this leads to can be summarized as: Community validation is the new marketing funnel!
But we still have a long way to go before we reach China's current level. A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about Western users discovering 小红书 (RedNote), which is also a great example in this context: The platform automatically generates links whenever a product, brand, or trending topic is mentioned, directing users to system-created pages that aggregate all related posts:
Source: LinkedIn Post from Olivia Plotnick.
This turns RedNote into an excellent platform for discovering new products - complete with all the related discussions amongst its users.
Why doesn't Instagram have features like this? Perhaps because its business model relies on brand advertising, and those brands prefer not to see negative customer opinions linked to their polished content. RedNote, on the other hand, earns revenue partly by selling products, so it benefits from ensuring users know what they're buying.
While brands in the West are still debating whether social commerce will ever take off, the report clearly shows that consumers are already there—eagerly shopping, reviewing, and influencing each other's purchases. It's the platforms and brands that are playing catch-up!
Perhaps instead of reinventing the wheel, Western companies could take a page from China's playbook—or at least borrow their instruction manual! After all, when it comes to turning social scrolling into shopping, Western brands are still in the "Adding to Cart" phase while Chinese platforms and their users have long since clicked "Order Confirmed."
