Desire Guidance Mechanisms and Covert Advertising: A Case Study of Xiaohongshu

Changlu Li

2025

Abstract

With the rapid development of the internet, social media has gradually evolved to offer many new features to meet user needs. As a popular social media platform, Xiaohongshu occupies an important position in the advertising field with its large group of young users and unique "experience sharing" culture. With the development of the platform, the definition of "advertising" and "experience sharing" is difficult to clear. Many hidden advertisements cover the essence of "advertising" by releasing flashy "experience talk", accompanied by copy and pictures and inducing words from the first perspective. It is found that the current academic research on individual marketing of the Xiaohongshu platform mainly focuses on the "profit model" and "development strategy". Through online field investigation, it is further found that, compared with the marketing mode dominated by the implicit advertisement of Key Opinion Leader (KOL) on traditional media platforms, the ordinary creators on the Xiaohongshu platform cover up the underlying desire guidance mechanism through elaborate speech techniques, thus forming a new implicit advertisement mode. This phenomenon reveals the blurring of the line between advertising and non-advertising content in platform content creation and highlights the increasingly important role that ordinary creators play in modern digital marketing.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Li C. (2025). Desire Guidance Mechanisms and Covert Advertising: A Case Study of Xiaohongshu. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Applied Psychology and Marketing Management - Volume 1: APMM; ISBN 978-989-758-791-7, SciTePress, pages 137-142. DOI: 10.5220/0014108500004942

in Bibtex Style

@conference{apmm25,
author={Changlu Li},
title={Desire Guidance Mechanisms and Covert Advertising: A Case Study of Xiaohongshu},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Applied Psychology and Marketing Management - Volume 1: APMM},
year={2025},
pages={137-142},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0014108500004942},
isbn={978-989-758-791-7},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Applied Psychology and Marketing Management - Volume 1: APMM
TI - Desire Guidance Mechanisms and Covert Advertising: A Case Study of Xiaohongshu
SN - 978-989-758-791-7
AU - Li C.
PY - 2025
SP - 137
EP - 142
DO - 10.5220/0014108500004942
PB - SciTePress