Through Regression Analysis of Mao Geping's Marketing Strategy:

The Construction Path of China's High-End Beauty Brands Is

Derived

Jingxuan Chen

Lee Shau Kee School of Business, Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China

Keywords: Regression Analysis, High-End Beauty Brand, Cultural Capital, Oriental Aesthetics, Founder IP.

Abstract: The high-end beauty market in China has long been monopolized by international brands. The core challenge

faced by domestic brands lies in the predicament of how to transform traditional cultural resources into market

competitiveness and build sustainable brand authority. This study takes the Maogeping brand as a case study

and, through a mixed research approach (text analysis, regression analysis and literature review of social media

data), explores how it achieved a breakthrough from the professional circle to the mass market through the

strategy of "founder's professional authority + Oriental cultural narrative + social media marketing". Through

the research, three main findings were made. First, the "scarcity of skills" of founder MAO Geping is

concrealized and disseminated through live streaming and short video teaching content, forming a cognitive

closed loop of "professionalism is value". Secondly, the "Qi Yun Dongfang" series, which collaborated with

the IP of the Forbidden City, has activated the young generation's recognition of traditional culture. Thirdly,

social media UGC activities (such as the "National Makeup Challenge") promote the diffusion of brand

influence from professional circles to a wide range of users by converting some technical terms into easy-to-

understand words for dissemination and lowering the participation threshold. Finally, this study proposed a

three-stage path of "anchoring value through the scarcity of skills", "reconstructing identity through cultural

symbols", and "activating the market through participatory communication", providing a new perspective for

brand theory in a non-Western context and offering practical inspiration for domestic high-end brands to break

through international suppression.

1 INTRODUCTION

The high-end beauty market in China is at a crucial

stage of structural transformation. According to

Euromonitor (2024) data, the scale of China's high-

end beauty market exceeded 83 billion yuan in 2023,

with an annual growth rate of 15.2%, significantly

higher than the 6.8% growth rate of the mass market.

However, the market has long been monopolized by

international brands such as L 'Oreal and Estee

Lauder. The "Western luxury symbol system" they

have built based on a century of historical

accumulation - such as French elegance and

American technological narrative - has formed an

unshakable brand moat (Kapferer, 2012). In sharp

contrast, domestic brands are facing a "double break"

in the process of high-end development: At the

cultural symbol level, traditional elements such as

opera makeup and Oriental aesthetics, due to the lack

of modern translation, are difficult to integrate into

the value coding logic of international luxury goods

(Torelli, Keh, & Chiu, 2023). In terms of market trust,

the 2023 Kantar Consumer Index shows that only

34% of consumers believe that domestic brands "have

the ability to develop high-end products", and the lack

of professional endorsement limits the premium

space.

This contradiction presents new complexity in the era

of digital economy. On the one hand, social media has

reconstructed the generation path of brand authority:

platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu have

increased the efficiency of KOL word-of-mouth

communication by 3 to 5 times, and new forms such

as the personification of founder ips and cross-border

collaborations have significantly reduced brand

education costs (Quest Mobile, 2023). On the other

hand, international brands are accelerating their

localization layout. L 'Oreal has launched the

"Forbidden City Lipstick" series, and Estee Lauder

622

Chen, J.

Through Regression Analysis of Mao Geping’s Marketing Strategy: The Construction Path of China’s High-End Beauty Brands Is Derived.

DOI: 10.5220/0013851100004719

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

In Proceedings of the 2nd Inter national Conference on E-commerce and Modern Logistics (ICEML 2025), pages 622-626

ISBN: 978-989-758-775-7

has collaborated with the Dunhuang IP, attempting to

capitalize on the benefits of the domestic trend. What

is more serious is that the penetration rate of cross-

border e-commerce has exceeded 28%, allowing

consumers to instantly compare prices of global

products (iResearch Consulting Group, 2023).

Domestic brands are facing a survival crisis of

"misalignment between high-end positioning and

value perception".

Against this background, the high-end

breakthrough of domestic brands has a dual urgency:

From the theoretical level, research on the

transformation of traditional cultural capital mostly

focuses on symbol transplantation, but neglects the

dynamic transformation mechanism from

professional authority to market authority (Holt,

2004). From a practical perspective, Gen Z

consumers present a "paradoxical demand" - they not

only pursue cultural recognition of domestic trends

(the search volume for high-end domestic beauty

products increased by 67% in 2023), but also demand

international-level product power (data from Tmall

shows that the return rate of domestic brands is 12%

higher than that of international brands) (Berger,

2019). The strategic path of the MAO Geping brand

provides a breakthrough model for this: through the

"Oriental Bone Structure Makeup Method", it

deconstructs the makeup of traditional Chinese opera

into modern aesthetic symbols, builds professional

trust by relying on the IP of the founder's national-

level makeup artist, and doubles the cultural premium

by taking advantage of the collaboration with the

Palace Museum. Eventually, it achieved 5.2 billion

exposures on the Douyin platform with the "makeup

imitation Challenge". This three-dimensional

transformation model of "cultural symbols -

professional authority - social fission" not only drove

its revenue to exceed 2.8 billion yuan in 2023 (CAGR

45%), but also verified the possibility for non-

Western brands to break through the symbol

hegemony.

This study, by deconstructing this case, aims to

reveal the core mechanism of the high-end

development of local brands in the digital economy

era: The first is the "creative destruction" path of

traditional cultural capital, that is, how to achieve

value upgrading through symbolic reconstruction

(such as Oriental bone structure aesthetics +

biotechnology) (Lu, Di, & Nie, 2023). The second is

the trust conversion efficiency of professional

founder ips and their role in mitigating consumers'

perceived risks. The third is the leverage effect of

cross-border collaborations in cultural premium and

youth-oriented communication (Arvidsson, 2006).

These findings can not only enrich the interpretive

dimensions of cultural capital theory in non-Western

contexts, but also provide a reusable strategic

framework for domestic brands to break the "high-

end predicament", possessing dual values of

theoretical innovation and industrial transformation.

(Libai, Bolton, Bügel, de Ruyter, Götz, Risselada, &

Stephen, 2010).

2 RESEARCH METHODS

2.1 Research Design

A mixed research method was adopted, combining

quantitative analysis (regression model) and

qualitative analysis (social media text topic coding) to

enhance the robustness of the conclusion.

2.2 Data Collection

2.2.1 Text Data

By capturing content related to "MAO Geping" and

"National trend beauty" from Weibo, Xiaohongshu

and Douyin platforms (2018-2023), a total of 128,000

comments and 12,000 short videos were obtained.

And use Python's SnowNLP library for sentiment

analysis to identify high-value keywords such as

"expensive but worth it" and "master-level".

2.2.2 Industry Data

By integrating the Euromonitor China High-end

Beauty Market Report (2018-2023) and the Douyin

E-commerce White Paper (2022), core indicators

such as market share and GMV growth rate were

extracted.

2.3 Regression Analysis

2.3.1 Data Preparation and Variable

Definition

The data covers the period from January 2018 to

December 2023, including the monthly sales figures

of 12 high-priced products (with a unit price of ≥500

yuan) of the Maogeping brand on its flagship stores

on Tmall and JD.com, totaling 60 months ×12

products =720 observed values. At the same time,

user comment and interaction data from Douyin,

Weibo and Xiaohongshu platforms were captured,

totaling 128,000 comments and 12,000 short videos.

It can be obtained through the API interfaces of

the open platforms of Tmall and JD.com, including

fields such as product price, sales volume, and

negative review rate. Social media data. Use the

Scrapy framework of Python to crawl public content,

Through Regression Analysis of Mao Geping’s Marketing Strategy: The Construction Path of China’s High-End Beauty Brands Is Derived

623

with keywords including "MAO Geping", "National

trend beauty", "founder IP", etc.

Data cleaning is carried out through the following

two methods. First, remove duplicates and invalid

data: Eliminate duplicate comments (such as the same

user repeatedly flooding comments) and meaningless

content (such as pure symbols and advertisements).

Secondly, variables such as GMV (in ten thousand

yuan) and play volume (in ten thousand times) are

standardized to the same dimension (Z-score) to

avoid deviations in the model due to differences in

magnitude.

Determine the dependent variable (Y) as the

premium capacity of the product. The negative

review rate (Y₁) is defined as the proportion of

negative reviews for high-priced products (the

proportion of reviews with a rating of ≤2 stars among

1-5 stars), and its value range is 0-100%. Sales growth

rate (Y₂)

The calculation method is

Growth rate = (sales for this period

− sales for last period)

/sales for last period ∗ 100%

The comprehensive premium index (Y) combines

Y₁ (reverse coding) and Y₂ using principal component

analysis (PCA). The first principal component

explains 82% of the variance, and the formula is

Y = 0.65 ∗ standardization(Y) − 0.35

∗ standardization

The independent variable (X) is the scarcity of

skills. The founder's live-streaming GMV (X₁), that

is, the sales volume of a single live-streaming session

(in ten thousand yuan), is taken as a natural logarithm

to alleviate the right-skewed distribution. Formula: ln

(GMV+1). The play count of teaching videos (X₂)

includes the total monthly play count of short

teaching videos (in ten thousand times), reflecting the

breadth of technology dissemination. The UGC

keyword frequency (X₃) includes the proportion (%)

of keywords such as "master-level" and

"irreplaceable" in user comments, which is extracted

through the TF-IDF algorithm.

Control variable (C) includes brand marketing

investment (C₁), that is, monthly advertising expenses

(in ten thousand yuan), including expenditures on

online promotion and offline activities. The festival

promotion effect (C₂), namely the dummy variable

(promotion month =1, non-promotion month =0),

covers major shopping festivals such as "Double 11"

and "618". Competitive product price fluctuation (C₃)

refers to the monthly price change rate (%) of similar

products of international competitors (such as L

'Oreal and Estee Lauder), which is calculated by

crawling data from the flagship stores of competing

products.

2.3.2 Model Construction

The multiple linear regression model was selected,

with the dependent variable being the comprehensive

premium index (Y), and the model equation was

Y=β



+β



(

)

+β



X+β



X+γ



C+γ



C+γ



+ϵ

3 RESULTS

Table1: The influence of various variables on the comprehensive premium index

Variable Coefficient

(β)

Standard

deviation

t value p value Explanation of economic significance

Intercept term

(β₀)

0.15 0.03 5 0 Benchmark premium level

In（GMV）（β₁

）

-0.08 0.01 -6.15 0 For every 1% increase in live-streaming

GMV, the rate of negative reviews drops by

0.08%

Teaching video

lay count (β₂)

-0.005 0.001 -4.2 0 For every 10,000 additional plays, the rate of

negative reviews decreases by 0.5%

UGC Keyword

Fre

uenc

(β

₃

)

-0.12 0.04 -3 0.003 For every 1% increase in key words, the rate

of ne

ative reviews decreases b

0.12%

Marketing

investment

(γ

₁

)

0.02 0.01 2 0.046 Increase the premium index by 0.02 for every

10,000

uan of investment

Holiday

Promotion (γ₂)

-0.1 0.05 -2 0.046 The monthly negative review rate of the

romotion decreased by 0.10%

Price fluctuations

of competing

roducts

(γ

₃

)

0.05 0.03 1.67 0.096 The price of competing products rose by 1%,

and the premium index increased by 0.05

Next, the author will conduct a reliability and

validity test on this table. Firstly, Cronbach's α

coefficient was used to evaluate the internal

consistency among various variables. The results

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show that α=0.82 (>0.7), indicating a high correlation

among the variables and good consistency within the

model. Secondly, repeated measurements were

conducted on the same sample at different time points,

and the Pearson correlation coefficient was 0.78

(p<0.01), indicating that the model had good stability.

Then conduct the validity test. It was confirmed

through expert review that the variable selection

covered the core factors influencing the

comprehensive premium index (such as GMV,

marketing investment, etc.), and the content validity

was good. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was

used. KMO=0.84 (>0.7), Bartlett's sphericity test was

significant (p<0.001), and the cumulative variance

contribution rate of the extracted principal factor was

72.3%, indicating a clear variable structure.

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used again:

The fitting indicators met the standards (CFI=0.93,

RMSEA=0.05), the factor loads of each variable were

all >0.6, and the structural validity of the model was

good. Finally, the research found that the square roots

of AVE among the variables were all greater than the

correlation coefficients, indicating that each variable

had good discriminant validity.

As shown in table 1, the GMV of one event

increased from 1 million to 2 million (an increase of

100%), and the negative review rate is expected to

decrease by 0.08%. Therefore, the growth in live-

streaming sales has a significant effect on reducing the

rate of negative reviews. Meanwhile, continuously

outputting teaching content (such as increasing the

monthly play count by 100,000) can cumulatively

reduce the negative review rate by 5%, significantly

enhancing the brand's reputation. Finally, for every

1% increase in keywords, the negative review rate

decreases by 0.12%. The leverage effect of UGC,

which encourages users to generate keyword content

such as "master-level", is an effective strategy for

enhancing brand authority at a low cost. as shown in

table 2, a strong correlation between "Oriental

aesthetics" and "cultural confidence" was discovered

(0.83), confirming that brand cultural confidence is the

core driving force for the high-end development of

domestic brands (Schroeder, 2009).

Table 2: The correlation strength of “Oriental aesthetics”.

Conjunctive

wor

Cosine

similarit

Economic

significance

cultural

confidence

0.83 The emotional

attachment points of

the symbols of

national trends

Modernity 0.76 Innovative translation

of traditional elements

Counter

service

0.68 A reference for high-

end value perception

As shown in table 2, the correlation intensity

between "cultural confidence" and "Oriental

aesthetics" is the highest (cosine similarity =0.83),

indicating that the national trend symbol holds an

important position in emotional identification.

"Modernity" comes second (0.76), reflecting the

market value of the innovative translation of

traditional elements; the "counter service" (0.68)

reflects the reinforcing effect of high-end

consumption scenarios on the perception of Eastern

aesthetic values. These conjunctions reveal the core

driving force of "Oriental aesthetics" in business

practice from three dimensions: emotion, innovation

and scene (Mirae Asset Asia Pacific Research, 2020).

4 ROBUSTNESS TEST AND

SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS

To ensure the reliability of the results, the author

conducted the following tests.

First, replace the dependent variable. Even if the

original negative review rate (Y₁) is used to replace

the comprehensive premium index, the direction of

the core independent variable coefficient is as follows

(0.01) Significance remained consistent

Then, time-segmented regression is conducted.

The data was divided into two periods, 2018-2020

and 2021-2023. The results showed that the impact of

skill scarcity on premium increased (beta rose from -

0.06 to -0.09), reflecting the accumulation of brand

authority over time.

Then use the instrumental variable method (IV).

Taking "platform traffic support policy" as the

instrumental variable of live-streaming GMV (IV has

a correlation of 0.65 with live-streaming GMV and a

correlation of 0.08 with the error term), the results of

the two-stage least squares method (2SLS) showed

that the endogeneity problem had a limited influence

on the conclusion (Hausman test p=0.21).

5 ECONOMIC SIGNIFICANCE

AND BUSINESS

IMPLICATIONS

For every 1% increase in live-streaming GMV, the

negative review rate drops by 0.08% (table1),

indicating that an increase in sales can significantly

improve the consumer experience. Therefore,

enterprises can set a GMV target of tens of millions

for a single live stream and concentrate traffic

through strategies such as time-limited discounts and

Through Regression Analysis of Mao Geping’s Marketing Strategy: The Construction Path of China’s High-End Beauty Brands Is Derived

625

exclusive gifts to amplify the effect of reducing

negative reviews.

For every 10,000 increases in the play volume of

teaching videos, the rate of negative reviews

decreases by 0.5% (table1), indicating that

educational content can effectively reduce negative

evaluations caused by improper use by consumers.

Therefore, enterprises can incorporate tutorial short

videos such as the "Three-Step Makeup Method" into

their monthly KPIs, emphasizing practicality and

operability. Product cultural symbols are also

embedded in the video to enhance the collaborative

perception of function and culture.

For every 1% increase in the frequency of UGC

keywords, the negative review rate decreases by

0.12% (table1). Tags such as "master-level" that are

spontaneously spread by users can establish a

professional brand image at a low cost. Therefore,

enterprises can design points or lottery activities to

encourage the use of specific keywords in user

reviews and monitor keyword growth through

semantic analysis. "Cultural confidence" can also be

integrated into the theme of UGC activities to

enhance users' emotional attachment.

The influence of price fluctuations of competing

products on the premium index (β=0.05, table1)

shows that differentiated positioning can weaken

price sensitivity (Zhang, L., & Zhao, S., 2021).

Therefore, the product name and ingredients can

echo the symbol of "Oriental aesthetics", while

emphasizing the translation of modern technology, to

meet the dual demands of high-end users for

"tradition + innovation". And by drawing on the

connection of "counter services", provide try-on

services or cultural experience areas in offline

channels to enhance the perception of high-end value.

6 CONCLUSIONS

The MAO Geping brand has established a path to

build the authority of a domestic high-end beauty

brand through a three-way collaborative strategy:

"anchoring value through the scarcity of

craftsmanship", "reconstructing identity through

cultural symbols", and "activating the market through

participatory communication". Its core paths include.

The materialization of technical authority (the

founder's IP transforms abstract skills into

experiential content, supporting high product

premiums). Symbolic consumption contextualization

(integrating traditional cultural elements into

consumption scenarios through modern design to

activate the identification of the young group).

Democratization of communication models (UGC

incentives lower participation thresholds, promoting

brands to penetrate from professional circles to the

mass market). These paths offer a new perspective for

brand theory in a non-Western context and provide

three practical paths for domestic high-end brands to

break through international suppression. First, build

pricing power based on technological scarcity.

Second, reconstruct the consumption identity through

cultural symbols. Third, expand the market base

through participatory communication.

Future research can be further explored. A

comparison of the acceptance of Eastern aesthetics

among Generation Z and the elderly. The

Intergenerational Inheritance Challenge and

Solutions of the Founder's IP. The validation of the

applicability of this model in other non-Western

markets (such as Southeast Asia).

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