Frontiers in Business, Economics and Management ISSN: 2766-824X | Vol. 7, No. 1, 2023 239 How to Use The KOL Marketing Model in The New Era to Stimulate the Consumption of Beauty Products ‐‐ Take Little Red Book as an Example Huanyu Meng1, a 1School of Economy and Management, Changsha University of Science and Technology, Changsha, 410114, China a202001050102@stu.csust.edu.cn Abstract: With the rapid development of B2C e-commerce model and the continuous rise of fan economy, KOL (Key opinion leader), the key opinion leader in the social media platform of "social content + e-commerce" model in the new era, has become the first factor affecting consumers' willingness to buy. This paper takes Little Red Book platform as the research sample, through the research method of questionnaire survey, specifically analyzes its marketing mode, marketing advantages and development prospects, combined with the purchase intention of consumers, to provide suggestions for the marketing development of KOL marketing platform. Keywords: KOL marketing, B2C model, Fan economy, Consumer intention. 1. Introduction There is evidence that B2C e-commerce plays a crucial role in today’s economy. Despite its long success, KOL marketing module in this new economy has a number of problems in use. The objective of this research are to determine whether only few apps able to achieve success. The main achievements, including contributions to the field can be summarized to draw lessons from the past and research new marketing models about e-commerce platforms. In this article, we combine the psychology of consumer to study the marketing advantages of the e-commerce platform to use the new marketing model to stimulate commodity consumption. 2. Opportunities and Development of Social E-commerce Platform In June 2013, the little red book platform was founded in Shanghai, and in 2014 for the first user experience, after nearly a decade of innovation and development, by personal daily life community sharing platform gradually upgraded to independently complete the business closed loop proprietary new electric business platform, grow into a new media platform to upgrade the era vane, has become the largest domestic UGC platform and e-commerce platform. Stephan Wilmet, chief user officer of L'OREAL, once said in an interview, " In Little Red Book, we can directly listen to the real voice of consumers. Real word of mouth, is the most solid link between the brand and consumers. " Now, when it comes to Little Red Book, it has become the "the first platform for promotion". At home and abroad, aiming at all levels of consumers, especially some small brands have created wave after wave of brand pursuit boom with the Little Red Book platform. When a number of popular stars join, the little red book "star style", more ignited the small red book popularity, become the first-choice platform for young people to browse and shop. In addition, [1]Lu Qian pointed out in her article "Research on the Business Model of Content-based Social Platforms" that " Under the strong pressure of e-commerce platforms, Little Red Book has tried to get rid of a single advertising and marketing revenue, and began to find the convergence point between content and e-commerce cross-platforms. Different from the general B2C model, it adopts a B2K2C model. KOL (opinion leader) has become the connector for brand and consumption, and plays an important role in the field of content and e-commerce. KOL + KOC jointly forms the platform value in the content production, and affects the decisions and choices of natural users. " In the era of epidemic situation, physical stores are increasingly declining. With the high popularity of Internet mobile terminal media, online procurement has increasingly become the primary choice for consumers to go shopping. At the same time, the network marketing mechanism initially established in China before 2020 is also developing rapidly under the tide of the current era. The successful transformation of shopping platforms gives social media platforms more opportunities. Little Red Book platform fully integrates "information" and "shopping" with new opportunities. —— KOL uses its own traffic to expand the user market for brand products, provide the promoted products to more audiences, while realizing its own traffic value and obtaining more public domain traffic, and winning huge profits for the brand. Today, this "win-win" marketing method has been widely used by major e-commerce platforms and brands. 3. KOL Marketing Mechanism Based on the Fan Economy With the high development of the internet and the market economy, the fan economy has gradually become an emerging economic form that cannot be underestimated in the market economy, and has the absolute power to lead the tide of young consumer groups in today's era.[2] Qin Jiayin the era of "fans economy based on the user UG C network marketing strategy analysis and development Suggestions" said, "economy" fans " is mainly characterized by producers and specific management team in order to maximize the potential economic relations, they will fans and consumers the two 240 roles, improve the user viscosity." In today's society, where the fan economy continues to lead the tide of The Times, the expert bloggers on social media have also become the main reference objects for consumers before shopping. Before young people buy various kinds of products, the evaluation and promotion content of KOL, an expert blogger on social media such as Little Red Book, has also become the main reference direction for consumers before shopping. KOL (Key opinion leader) is a key opinion leader, usually a prominent person in a particular field who has more and more accurate product information, is accepted or trusted by the group, and influences purchases by the group. Based on its strong fan base, it can greatly influence the consumption and purchase decisions of relevant groups through its own influence. KOL is also subdivided into top KOL, vertical segmentation KOL, and talent users. Due to the particularity of the beauty industry, the beauty industry generally invites "vertical KOL" to distribute product content promotion on media platforms when using the KOL marketing model. In the article "Research on Consumer Purchase Behavior in the" Fan Economy ",[3]Song Yihang pointed out that " before entering the e-commerce live streaming, consumers may be affected by the effect of third parties, leading to the strengthening of self-awareness. You don't think you will buy goods irrationally. The ability of opinion leaders to close the distance with the audience may lead to the emergence of the third person effect, so the information source of consumers themselves may seriously affect their own judgment. Fundamentally, the message is delivered by opinion leaders, helping to stimulate consumer procurement enthusiasm and energy. " Before began to study this topic, the author first use the way of questionnaire preliminary understanding of the public attitude towards KOL marketing, survey found, in the society, more than sixty percent people said they had bought products through KOL marketing, and we also found that the public in social media entertainment, about 40% of users prefer actively browse blogger KOL marketing content, and usually have their own follow and trust blogger. At the same time, we also investigated consumers' satisfaction with the shopping experience of KOL marketing model. Unexpectedly, a small number of consumers were very dissatisfied with this shopping experience, and a large number of people said that the shopping experience was average. In the survey of the public's excessive attitude towards KOL marketing, only a small number of people think that they are too bored, while most still maintain a positive and optimistic attitude. 4. The Great Module Change of the Little Red Book The content source of Little Red Book is divided into three parts, namely, UGC, PGC and PUGC, represented by star talent. After the operation of this mode, some high-quality users will accumulate some loyal fans, and these high-quality users will often drive a certain wind direction, because these users have a certain degree of credibility, a product through high-quality user recommendation, the transmission speed and scope will be wider. At the same time, the addition of the popular stars, making the little red book reached a height. In 2018, Perfect Diary used Little Red Book and became the first domestic beauty makeup sales brand on Tmall during the "11.11" period, but these sales have nothing to do with Little Red Book. The "little black diamond lipstick" that exploded through the Little Red Book, it was set a record of selling 20,000 units in 10 minutes on Tmall. In 2018,60% of the perfect Diary's sales are in Juhuasuan. And the perfect diary from the red book traffic was precipitated to the private domain of wechat. In the past two years, the rise of the new Chinese national brand tide consumer brands, many are started from the Little Red Books drainage, but these brands in the small red book fire and did not bring profits to the platform. In order to maximize the interests of its own platform, Little Red Book will pay more and more attention to the construction of the internal trading system, transfer its ability to promote to its own e-commerce business, and replan its own content and marketing model. In February 2019, Little Red Book announced the upgrade of its organizational structure, upgraded the original community e-commerce division to the "brand" department, and launched the brand partner platform, connecting the brand side, MCN and KOL, and taking a commission in the future. It marks the rich commercial means and the further development of flow value. This commercial strategy adjustment is mainly to create an internal business closed- loop, not to marry clothes for others, more for the enterprise to obtain benefits. 5. KOL Marketing Mechanism -Takes Beauty Products as An Example Little Red Book platform has an absolute advantage in KOL promotion in specific fields, especially in beauty makeup. Compared with similar social sharing platforms such as: Weibo, TikTok, Douban, etc.... For example, for the promotion of a new lipstick, other platforms may only be limited to celebrity endorsements and exquisite series of posters. As social media users, it is difficult to consumers in other platform for more accurate comprehensive trial experience and feedback, and in the little red book we can easily get for the use of new products evaluation, even clothing collocation, after decided to buy, users just click on the content notes below goods link in this platform "store" plate can immediately buy them. Due to the particularity of beauty makeup content, if the platform wants to promote beauty makeup industry, investment in KOL must be before promotion, very familiar with product composition and use, after his personally trial product, to the user detailed use methods and experience, this requires KOL know related professional knowledge and beauty industry related work experience, can answer users before and after the use of related questions, dialogue with consumer equality. "Users are becoming more and more cautious about buying beauty products, and users are used to browsing reviews before deciding whether to buy them before placing an order. The products experienced by KOL are more convincing than the traditional rigid promotion, such as the comparison of the effects before and after the product use, the product evaluation collection of similar and different brands, and the product analysis and use experience, etc. The final KOL often directly affect the user's purchase decision."[4] Zhou Yao pointed out in the" Key Opinion Leader Marketing Positioning Research in the Era of "We Media" (KOL) - Take Little Red Book as an example ". Under the development of the content mode of Little Red Book many beauty makeup expert bloggers have gained a lot 241 of loyal fans with their superior professional knowledge and patient and dedicated attitude to explain to netizens. In the era of rapid development of beauty makeup industry, most women little red book users generally have their own always "follow" and trust professional beauty makeup bloggers, bloggers with their professional selection and humorous video style to attract many fans audience, at a specific time issue skin care on video at the same time to enhance the platform user engagement. In the process of video skin care and makeup, users will naturally introduce their own related beauty products to users, with the focus on strengthening the user experience and participation. Through a detailed and popular product experience introduction, and simultaneously explain the product content and ingredients, even if users do not buy the relevant products, they will learn the knowledge and experience of skin care and beauty makeup needed. Take beauty blogger Luo as an example. With his professional beauty knowledge and beauty product explanation and rigorous product selection principles, he has gained more than 4 million followers since entering the Little Red Book platform in November 2019, and has an unshakable position in beauty on various social media platforms. Take Little Red Book platform as an example. Now, Luo’s video content is mainly divided into two parts. Related videos are included in two large notes, respectively: "Skin Care Pyramid" and "Teach skin care hand in hand", which scientifically and accurately explain the relevant knowledge of skin care to everyone. At the same time, the explanation for users to deliver their recommended strictly selected goods. With super high user trust, each advertising will greatly promote product sales, and lay a solid user base for the brand side. The product sold by each video will bring huge sales to the enterprise. Users can choose to buy this product directly in the "store" of the Little Red Book platform, which also brings direct traffic and benefits to the platform. 6. Conclusion According to the research in this paper, it can be found that the success of KOL marketing mechanism in social media platforms gives new development opportunities to Internet e- commerce platforms and MCN companies. According to the investigation and research, consumers accept a high degree of KOL, but how to address the actual problems of consumers following the KOL shopping experience and the uneven quality of the blogger promotion content needs to be regulated by all parties. Especially in the beauty and personal care industries, the quality of products is an important factor that determines consumers' choice. The biggest advantage of social media platform "social + promotion" experiential shopping promotion is the magic weapon for the profit victory of e-commerce platforms. How to improve the KOL evaluation mechanism, understand the development characteristics and advantages and disadvantages of each platform, and skillfully use KOL marketing has become a more important concern. At the same time, the study of consumer psychology, to create the most can stimulate consumers shopping desire to promote marketing content, also need to continue in-depth research. Only by meeting the needs of consumers to the greatest extent, can we give full play to the advantages of network new media marketing at the crossroads of the vigorous development of e- commerce, and achieve a win-win situation for media users, e-commerce platforms and brands. References [1] Qin Jiayao & Angel. (2022). Analysis and development Suggestions based on user UGC in the era of fan economy — — Take Xiaohongshu as an example. Industrial Innovation Research, 16: 34-36. [2] Lu Qian. (2022). Research on the business model of the content-based community platform —— Based on the case study of the Little Red Book. China Press, 14: 56-57. [3] Song Yihang. (2022). Research on consumer purchasing behavior in the "fan economy" (master's degree dissertation, Lanzhou University of Finance and Economics). https://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbname=CMFD TEMP&filename=1022559848.nh [4] Zhou Yao. (2022). Analysis of KOL Marketing model in the era of We-media —— Take Xiaohongshu as an example. Journal of Huainan Normal University, 01: 73-76 + 112.