An Inquiry into the Marketing Model Innovation of Chinese Beauty Cross-border E-commerce in Integration with TikTok

Abstract

In 2024, China’s cross-border exports of beauty and personal-care products exceeded USD 42 billion, of which transactions completed through the TikTok ecosystem leapt from 6.7 per cent in 2022 to 28.4 per cent—becoming the fastest-growing single channel. Drawing on triangulated data released by the General Administration of Customs of China, GoodsFox and TikTok Ltd., this paper traces the evolutionary trajectory of Chinese beauty brands on TikTok in terms of transaction volume, traffic structure and user equity. The findings reveal that the emerging paradigm of “content-as-shelf” has re-configured the conventional person–goods–place logic. However, rapid expansion has been accompanied by a triad of tensions—regulatory uncertainty, cultural discount and insufficient supply-chain resilience—leading to a 4.3-percentage-point year-on-year increase in return rates in Europe and North America during the first half of 2024 and a repurchase rate 9.6 percentage points lower than that of Japanese and Korean competitors. To address these pain-points, we propose a compliance-front-loaded, data-driven dual-circular interest-commerce framework that embeds U.S. FDA and EU EC No 1223/2009 regulatory nodes into the entire chain of product selection, live streaming, payment and after-sales service, while a DeepSeek time-series model forecasts sub-national tax burdens and public sentiment in real time to enable dynamic pricing and inventory diversion. The case of KANS, which topped Douyin’s beauty GMV list for eleven consecutive months in 2023–2025, illustrates how the brand replicated the loop of “short-drama seeding – KOL conversion – private-domain retention” in Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia, raising quarterly repurchase rates in Southeast Asia to 42.7 % and increasing average order value by 18.5 % compared with legacy shelf-commerce. We argue that only by translating compliance capabilities into differentiated narratives and upgrading data assets into brand equity can Chinese beauty brands build a sustainable competitive moat within TikTok’s decentralized traffic arena.