Community Validation is the new Marketing Funnel !
China remains an excellent window into our digital future. For that the latest Trend Report from The New Consumer about the beauty sector offers fresh evidence of this: while not every Chinese digital tactic translates to Western markets, the study shows that many proven successful ideas from China are increasingly demonstrating similar effectiveness in Western markets.
Here are 4 key insights from the report that illustrate this trend:
TikTok Shop is bringing genuine discovery-driven e-commerce to Western markets, and consumers are responding positively when it's executed well.
Video content has become central to the e-commerce experience, fundamentally transforming how products are discovered and evaluated.
Social media is overtaking Google as consumers increasingly shift their search behavior from traditional search engines to social platforms.
Consumers crave authentic discussions over polished content—they're seeking user reviews, trusted influencer try-ons, and unfiltered feedback from fellow customers on social media.
What we're witnessing in the West is the emergence of a reality that has been standard in China for years: consumers discover products on social media, gather opinions and reviews from other users, engage in discussions, and ultimately make purchases directly on the same platform. TikTok Shop is the first Western platform to offer this complete, integrated experience.
This evolution can be summarized as:
Community validation is the new marketing funnel.
However, we in the West still have significant ground to cover before reaching China's current sophistication level. A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about Western users discovering 小红书 (RedNote) and here are specific RedNote features that perfectly illustrate this gap:
The platform automatically generates links whenever products, brands, or trending topics are mentioned, directing users to system-created pages that aggregate all related posts. Even more sophisticated is RedNote's AI ask function—users can pose questions to an AI, but instead of generating generic responses, the AI draws exclusively from the platform's user-generated content to provide answers. This creates a collective intelligence system where AI serves as a smart curator of community knowledge, not a replacement for it.
Source: LinkedIn Post from Olivia Plotnick.
These seamless integrations of AI + community turn RedNote into an excellent platform for discovering new products—complete with all the related discussions amongst its users.
Why doesn't Instagram offer similar features?
Maybe because most Western social media platforms prioritize ad revenue over community value. Instagram's business model depends on keeping advertisers happy—and brands paying for ads don't want negative reviews automatically linked to their content.
RedNote takes a fundamentally different approach. Its core value proposition is helping users make informed decisions through genuine user feedback, both positive and negative. Suppressing negative reviews would completely undermine what the platform stands for and what users expect from it. The community comes to RedNote specifically for this unfiltered, comprehensive view of products—they want the real story, not just the marketing polish.
This creates a virtuous cycle: because RedNote serves its community's need for authentic information first, users trust the platform more, engage more deeply, and ultimately make more purchases. Western platforms optimize for ad impressions that benefit advertisers. RedNote optimizes for community trust and informed decision-making that benefits users—and ironically, this community-first approach also drives better business outcomes.
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. 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."
