Analysis of RedNote’s Competitiveness and Ecological Model

Xiuhan Yang

Conservatory of Music and Dance, Yunnan Normal University, Juxian Street, Chenggong District, China

Keywords: RedNote, Social e-Commerce, User-Generated Content (UGC), Ecological Model, Platform Competition.

Abstract: With the development of the Internet, various platform software emerges in an endless stream. This paper

takes RedNote as the research object to analyze its core competitiveness, development and challenges in the

field of social e-commerce. Through case and data analysis, it is found that its competitiveness is reflected in

the unique "content + social + e-commerce" ecological model. With user-generated content (UGC) as the core,

it builds a high-stickiness community; relying on precise algorithm recommendations and diversified content

to cover young consumer groups; and achieving commercial growth through brand cooperation and e-

commerce closed loop. Its ecological model successfully builds a closed-loop scenario of "discovery-sharing-

purchase", drives consumer decisions through content, and consolidates user retention with community

stickiness. At the same time, RedNote is also facing content homogeneity, pressure from fake information

governance, and competition threats from external platforms. This article analyzes RedNote's market

competitiveness based on it and proposes suggestions such as optimizing the platform to improve quality and

expanding global layout, providing a reference for RedNote to consolidate its market position.

1 INTRODUCTION

RedNote was initially positioned as a cross-border

beauty content sharing community to help users

overcome the information barriers of overseas

shopping. In 2014, it entered the e-commerce industry

to achieve a closed loop of "planting grass-

consumption” and then improved the supply chain by

building its own bonded warehouse. In 2016, it

transformed into a social e-commerce platform and

launched the live broadcast function, gradually

forming a "content + transaction" ecosystem. In 2018,

it accelerated its expansion after receiving investment

from the two giants Alibaba and Tencent. In 2019, it

was selected as "Forbes China's Most Innovative

Enterprise in 2019", and started its global layout, but

at the same time faced content compliance

challenges. As of 2022, the platform has gathered

150,000 business entities and has become a UGC

content hub covering all categories of lifestyle. In

2024, taking advantage of the window period when

TikTok was blocked overseas, its short video function

and Chinese cultural characteristics attracted an

influx of international users, completing the leap from

a local life guide to a global content platform, and

https://orcid.org/0009-0008-5490-9208

continuing to deepen the unique business model of

"content + social + e-commerce". RedNote is China's

leading "content + social + e-commerce" lifestyle

platform, and its core concept is "mark my life".

Users share their real experiences in beauty, fashion,

travel, food and other fields through pictures, texts

and short videos, forming its unique "planting grass"

culture (Zhu,2023). Currently, RedNote has over 300

million monthly active users, with young women as

the core group. It has built a "social + e-commerce"

ecosystem covering all scenarios such as beauty,

fashion, and local life, with an average daily note

publishing volume of over 3 million. The platform

has accelerated commercialization through "live e-

commerce + closed-loop transactions", with more

than 200,000 brand merchants, and the "slow live

broadcast" model of celebrities has repeatedly set a

single GMV record of over 100 million, with both

advertising and e-commerce revenue growing. The

global layout continues to advance, with more than 50

million overseas users, leveraging the opportunity of

Chinese brands going overseas and cultural output to

expand international influence, but faces challenges

in localized operations and compliance. Balancing

commercialization and community tone is its core

488

Yang, X.

Analysis of RedNote’s Competitiveness and Ecological Model.

DOI: 10.5220/0013847900004719

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on E-commerce and Modern Logistics (ICEML 2025), pages 488-493

ISBN: 978-989-758-775-7

issue, and it is also necessary to cope with the squeeze

of competitors.

This article takes RedNote as the research object,

analyzes the differences between RedNote and its

competitors based on its unique ecological model,

and thus analyzes the competitiveness of RedNote.

2 ANALYSIS OF REDNOTE’S

DIFFERENTIATION

STRATEGY

RedNote is a typical social e-commerce platform

company. Its core value lies in connecting users,

merchants, creators and third-party service providers

through multilateral network effects to form a closed-

loop ecology of "content-transaction-data". The

emergence of RedNote has broken the boundaries

between traditional social and e-commerce and built

a closed loop of "content seeding-interactive

discussion-commodity transaction". The platform

relies on user-generated content (UGC), which refers

to users creating accounts on social media platforms

and sharing their own content. These contents have

various forms, such as pictures and videos on social

media. These users began to shift from receiving

information to creating content and are also keen to

become content sharers (Wang, 2022). In 2023,

RedNote's GMV will exceed 200 billion yuan, with

advertising business revenue accounting for about

80%, and the proportion of e-commerce continuing to

rise. The average daily usage time of users exceeds

60 minutes, and user stickiness reaches 35%, which

is higher than most vertical communities. By 2023,

the platform will gather more than 50 million brand

enterprise accounts, becoming a core position for

brands to reach young consumers.

2.1 Content Ecology and User Groups

RedNote focuses on real user sharing, and its content

covers beauty, fashion, travel, food and other fields.

Its users are mainly young women. The platform

combines UGC (user-generated content) and PUGC

(professional user-generated content) to create a

dynamic and highly interactive community

environment with UGC as the cornerstone, forming a

highly interactive community (Liu et al., 2024).

At the same time, it has built a community ecology

that coexists with diversity and verticalization and has

both life guide and social interaction attributes. The

platform content covers four core areas: beauty and

fashion, lifestyle, knowledge and local consumption.

Among them, beauty and fashion has long occupied a

high traffic area, and users form a consumption

decision chain through product reviews, makeup

tutorials and other content; while lifestyle content such

as fitness, home, and travel has grown rapidly in recent

years, reflecting users' pursuit of "exquisite life". It is

worth noting that the rise of knowledge-based content

(such as workplace skills and education planning) has

attracted highly educated user groups, pushing the

platform content from entertainment to practicality. In

terms of content form, UGC (user-generated content)

accounts for more than 90%. The sharing of real

experiences has built a high-trust community

atmosphere. The platform has achieved the promotion

and dissemination of creativity through UGC (Li,

2024). Short videos have penetrated rapidly due to

their immersive experience, but in-depth graphic notes

are still the mainstream carrier of knowledge content,

and users are more inclined to obtain systematic

information through long texts. On RedNote, users

achieve emotional resonance with creators through

interactive methods such as likes and comments,

which satisfies users' emotional experience. This

emotional resonance formed between each other is

closely related to the algorithm recommendation

mechanism (Liu et al., 2024).The algorithm

recommendation mechanism strengthens the dual

distribution logic of "interest + social", which not only

accurately matches content based on user tags but also

forms a circle of communication through the attention

chain, so that niche vertical content can be

continuously exposed. User participation is one of the

criteria for testing the success of social media (He,

2024). As shown in the figure, the main active users

of RedNote mostly reflect the distinctive

characteristics of RedNote's wide user group and the

continuous breakthrough of the circle dominated by

young women.

Data source: https://www.qian-gua.com 2024

Figure 1: Gender Distribution Chart of the Platform.

Analysis of RedNote’s Competitiveness and Ecological Model

489

Data source: https://www.qian-gua.com 2024.

Figure 2：Age Distribution Chart of the Platform

Data source: https://www.qian-gua.com 2024

Figure 3: Urban Hierarchy Distribution Chart of the

Platform

2.2 Combination of e-Commerce and

Content

RedNote uses the "grass planting" model to allow

users to share their shopping experiences, and the

platform embeds e-commerce functions to form a

"content + e-commerce" closed loop. Different from

the traditional platform AISAS integrated marketing

model, RedNote integrates Attention to Interest,

Search, Action, and Share through Consideration, and

combines them into a CAS model. This is a major

feature of RedNote's consumer behavior path. At the

same time, users who actively search will use

RedNote's search function frequently, especially

when the brand focuses on increasing marketing

investment or there are major events such as new

product launches, the search volume for the brand in

RedNote will increase significantly. In a data-driven

precise ecosystem, RedNote's recommendation

algorithm can "plant grass" for users based on their

interests and behavioral habits, based on the

characteristics of the product and their preferences,

and then "break the circle" to develop and achieve a

perfect closed loop. Similar to the value co-creation

theory, it allows consumers to become participants,

from passive to active, so that the user experience is

fully satisfied and the user's product usage cycle is

extended.

2.3 Community Atmosphere and Trust

Mechanism

Relevant scholars mentioned that only by

strengthening the supervision of content authenticity

and services can the platform win the trust of

consumers, improve their experience and retain the

user group (Yang and Wang, 2024). RedNote uses a

strict review mechanism and algorithm

recommendation to ensure that the content is

authentic and reliable, and users have a high degree

of trust in the platform. RedNote's community

atmosphere takes authenticity and high trust as its

core competitiveness, relying on the UGC model to

build a "filter-free" ecology sharing. Users recognize

the authenticity of its content and form an efficient

"search-planting-consumption" link. The platform

strengthens vertical circle interaction through

algorithm recommendation and interest tags,

promotes the dissemination of niche culture and

offline linkage, and users use it for an average of 55

minutes a day. The high activity comes from the

mutual assistance scenarios driven by "altruistic"

content. The strict review mechanism and the

"account and store integration" policy balance

commercialization and community tone and resist the

risk of "filter controversy". This culture, based on real

sharing and linked by circles, not only maintains user

stickiness, but also explores an innovative path of

"content and business symbiosis" for social e-

commerce, becoming a model for industry

differentiation.

2.4 International Layout

RedNote's international layout is promoted by the

dual wheels of "community-driven + localized

operation", focusing on the Southeast Asian, North

American and Japanese and Korean markets, and

replicating the "real sharing" community ecology. In

view of the young population dividend in Southeast

Asia, the overseas version "Uniik" launched local

language and payment systems and launched special

content such as religious wear and local store

exploration. The number of users will exceed 5

million in 2023; in Europe and the United States, it

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uses the international student community as a fulcrum

to attract users through cross-border shopping, study

abroad guides and other content and promote

domestic brands to go overseas. The platform adopts

a dual-track content strategy of "global vertical

category + local culture", retaining general topics

such as beauty and fashion, while supporting local

creators to produce regional special content (such as

Japanese kimono culture and French niche perfume)

，Overseas UGC accounts for 35%. The technical

side relies on AI translation and cross-regional tag

systems to promote the circulation of multilingual

content. However, internationalization faces

challenges such as strong competition from Instagram

and TikTok, low user interaction rates in Europe and

the United States, high data privacy compliance costs,

and delayed response from localization teams. In the

future, it is necessary to deepen cross-cultural content

co-creation, strengthen cooperation with local e-

commerce and logistics, and explore the "social +

cross-border service" model in order to establish

differentiated advantages in the global market.

Although the current layout is in its early stages,

relying on its highly sticky community genes and

flexible operating strategies, RedNote is gradually

building a global social e-commerce ecosystem.

2.5 Brand Cooperation and Marketing

Strategy

RedNote has launched customized marketing plans

through in-depth cooperation with brands. On June 23,

2020, RedNote’s brand cooperation released the first

high-quality notes red list, which means that RedNote

pays more and more attention to the development of

brand cooperation and begins to encourage users to

produce and disseminate high-quality brand

cooperation notes. By improving the quality of brand

cooperation notes, it can achieve marketing

conversion of high-quality content.

The KOL marketing strategy integrates the KOL

advantages of the platform, with the middle-level

influencers as the main and tail-level influencers as

the auxiliary. The middle-level influencers act as

opinion leaders to release topics, and the tail-level

influencers assist in spreading, attracting various

influencers to form a unique UGC atmosphere; at the

same time, fan interaction activities are launched to

generate viral fission with the help of fan power. And

as the consumer decision-making path evolves, the

new consumption closed loop (purchase-experience-

recognition-binding) replaces the old system, and

users educate consumers on categories through KOLs

， It can effectively promote user purchases and

achieve the maximum reach of RedNote users at a

low cost, which will be beneficial for brands,

merchants or institutions to launch and operate

RedNote, thereby maximizing profits. RedNote's

"community + e-commerce" social e-commerce

model has gradually become a popular operation

model, and the SIPS model provides a framework for

its marketing strategy to achieve the growth and

development of UGC (Wu,2024).

3 PORTER'S FIVE FORCES

ANALYSIS OF REDNOTE

3.1 Bargaining Power of Suppliers

(Medium to High)

RedNote's UGC (user-generated content) relies on a

large number of creators (bloggers, KOLs, and

ordinary users). Although creators rely on platform

traffic, top bloggers may turn to competing products

such as Douyin and Bilibili due to changes in

platform rules or profit-sharing issues, so their

bargaining power is medium to high. Brand

merchants and advertisers are the core sources of

income. Advertisers are sensitive to the platform's

traffic accuracy and conversion rate. If RedNote's

advertising effect is not as good as Douyin or WeChat,

advertisers may transfer their budgets, so their

bargaining power is relatively high. For technology

and service providers, cloud services (such as Alibaba

Cloud and Tencent Cloud) and payment channels

(WeChat and Alipay) are highly concentrated, but

there are many alternative options, and their

bargaining power is medium.

3.2 Buyer Bargaining Power (High)

On the user side, users (especially young women) are

sensitive to content quality and community

atmosphere, and the conversion cost is low (they can

turn to Douyin and Weibo for seeding). If too much

commercial content damages the experience, the risk

of user loss is high.

On the advertiser side, advertisers pursue ROI. If

the platform traffic cost is higher than that of

competing products or the conversion rate decreases,

the budget may be transferred to other channels. For

e-commerce consumers, the user price comparison

cost is low. RedNote's self-operated e-commerce

needs to compete with Taobao, JD.com, etc., and

price and logistics experience are the key (Lin and

Shen, 2023).

Analysis of RedNote’s Competitiveness and Ecological Model

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3.3 Threat from Potential Competitors

(Medium)

The “social content + e-commerce model” requires

the accumulation of users, content and supply chain

capabilities at the same time, and has high barriers.

However, segmented platforms may appear in

vertical fields (such as beauty and maternal and child

care). Faced with cross-border competition from

giants, Douyin (interest e-commerce), WeChat (mini

programs + private domains), Kuaishou, etc. have

entered the grass-growing track through traffic

advantages, posing a greater threat. In the

internationalization challenge, RedNote may face

competition from Instagram and TikTok in the

expansion of markets such as Southeast Asia. In the

face of threats, the community barriers of "real grass-

growing" should be consolidated and the international

layout should be accelerated.

3.4 Threat of Substitutes (High)

Traditional e-commerce platforms, such as Taobao’s

“Guangguang” and JD.com’s “Zhongcao Show”,

directly divert users by imitating the functions of

RedNote, while short video seeding on social media,

such as Douyin and Weibo, is more likely to reach the

general public and replace some content consumption

scenarios. Consumers may return to offline stores for

trial or make decisions through recommendations

from friends, weakening the value of online seeding.

Therefore, the threat of substitutes for RedNote is

high. In the face of this situation, it is necessary to

strengthen the “content-transaction” closed loop

(such as live e-commerce and private brands) to

enhance its irreplaceability.

3.5 Competition Intensity of Existing

Competitors (High)

Douyin has more traffic and stronger algorithm

recommendations, but its content is more

entertainment-oriented, while Weibo has general

information attributes and lacks depth in seeding

content. The focus of competition, user time,

advertising budget, and competition for high-quality

creators are all key to competition. RedNote's "real

sharing" mentality and the proportion of female users

(over 70%) are core barriers, and consolidating

differentiation is the key to improving

competitiveness.

4 STRATEGIC

RECOMMENDATIONS

The strategic planning of the RedNote platform

revolves around four core dimensions. First, build a

content moat, strengthen platform supervision by

strictly controlling false marketing behaviors, and

carry out mental health and moral quality propaganda,

continue to strengthen the core value of the platform's

"real user experience", enhance user communication

and establish a trusting community environment

(Chen, 2024). Secondly, promote the technology

empowerment system, improve the accuracy of

advertising based on user behavior data analysis, and

simultaneously optimize the creator's commercial

monetization tool matrix; at the same time, efforts are

made to strengthen the closed-loop business

ecosystem, and by improving its own supply chain

system and logistics service system, the traffic loss

caused by users jumping to external links can be

effectively reduced. In addition, a global layout

strategy is implemented to regionally replicate the

domestically proven mature operating model to the

emerging markets in Southeast Asia, and a

differentiated competition strategy is adopted to

avoid direct confrontation with leading platforms

such as TikTok. The core challenge of RedNote is

how to maintain the "small and beautiful" community

tone while accelerating commercialization. Its future

competitiveness depends on whether it can find the

best balance between "content authenticity" and

"commercial efficiency."

5 CONCLUSION

This paper starts from the ecological model and

explores the competitiveness of RedNote. Through

literature analysis and data analysis, it is concluded

that the core competitiveness of RedNote is mainly

reflected in its unique "content + social + e-

commerce" ecological model. Through the

differentiation analysis of RedNote and Porter's five

forces analysis, it reflects its uniqueness over its

competitors, and further explains the manifestation of

RedNote's ecological model in its competitiveness.

RedNote's core competitiveness lies in building trust

through real content and forming a closed-loop

ecosystem of "discovery-decision-purchase". The key

to its success lies in the seamless connection of social

relationships, content value and commercial

realization, while maintaining the community tone

through refined operations. In the future, it needs to

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continue to make breakthroughs in e-commerce

infrastructure, content innovation and global layout to

cope with the challenges of other competing products.

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