Slide to the place where the ball is going to reach.
01 Interest-driven Consumption: A Prevailing Trend
An increasing number of consumers are now willing to pay for their "interests."
The stock price of Pop Mart soared 20 - fold in two and a half years. What supported the change in the valuation logic was the astonishing 49% repurchase rate inspired by MOLLY, Labubu, and other characters. The box - office revenue of large - scale concerts nationwide approached 40 billion yuan last year, a year - on - year increase of 66%. The enthusiasm for star - chasing has driven the concert economy forward at full speed. Falling in love with virtual idols has rapidly spread among female game players. The seemingly niche market of female - oriented games has reached a scale close to 100 billion yuan.
As long as it is attractive enough, even the smallest interest can give rise to a considerable market in China. Behind these changes lies a redefinition of "consumption" by people.
In the past, consumption was about "firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, and tea," mainly aiming to meet basic living needs. Now, consumption is leaning towards "qin (a seven - stringed plucked instrument), chess, calligraphy, painting, poetry, wine, and flowers" to cater to people's hobbies.
Apparently, consumption is shifting from "necessity" to "self - gratification."
According to the data from "2024 China Youth Consumption Trend Report," 37% of consumers have clearly stated that their consumption is driven by personal interests, which is a significant change from the past. More notably, there are generational differences: the younger the consumers are, the more obvious the interest - driven consumption becomes. The consumption concepts of young people are reshaping the future market trend.
In this context, enterprises need to make adaptive adjustments.
For example, they need to move from being "eye - catching" to being "heart - winning." Being seen by consumers is only half of the journey. More importantly, they need to be liked by consumers. Therefore, interesting, reliable, and highly contextualized content has become a necessity for marketing, giving rise to content marketing and grass - planting marketing. Meanwhile, the relationship between enterprises and consumers is no longer a brief encounter but an attempt to form a long - term and stable relationship, which means that enterprises need to gain consumers' recognition at the value level.
The environment has changed. Interest - driven consumption has become a prevailing trend.
02 Redefining "What's Worth Buying"
In the business world centered around consumers, an eternal truth is that when consumers change, enterprises need to respond.
As an important domestic consumption guide, Smzdm was established in 2010.
In the early days of entrepreneurship, Sui Guodong, the founder, mentioned in a media interview that his website had three criteria for recommending products: good brands, good products, and good prices. These three criteria were in line with consumers' definition of "worth" at that time. Back then, online shopping was booming in China, and consumers were exposed to an unprecedented flood of online products.
While bringing great convenience, consumers also had new demands: how to quickly find products worth buying? Smzdm, with its fair product recommendations from a third - party perspective, cleverly filled this gap. Aligning with market demand enabled it to develop rapidly and successfully list on the A - share market just nine years after its establishment.
In the early days, consumers' definition of "worth" was simple and straightforward. They focused on product quality and price, and this consumption mentality shaped the original appearance of Smzdm.
However, now consumers not only pay attention to products and prices but also start to care about the impact of consumption on their lives. Does it bring pleasure? Does it reflect their values? Does it bring them closer to the "ideal life"?
As consumers' definition of "worth" has changed, Smzdm has also started to make new strategic adjustments in line with the trend.
Last year, at the Strategic Conference of Smzdm Technology, the name Smzdm GEN2 first appeared in public, using the image of "the second generation" to show the platform's ambition for upgrading. Through GEN2, Smzdm shifted from "advocating scientific consumption" to "emphasizing interest - driven consumption." After one year, this shift has borne fruit.
The annual report data released by Smzdm Technology in April this year showed that the activation volume of Smzdm's mobile APP and the number of registered users both increased. They increased by 8% and 5% year - on - year respectively, indicating that the platform is providing support for more consumption decisions.
Who designs the shape of a ship? The designer or the sea?
People's first reaction is often that it is the former without a doubt. But upon closer consideration, the latter is the answer. Because the will of the sea determines the fate of the ship, and ships that do not fit the environment will eventually be eliminated. The same goes for Smzdm. When the "sea" of consumers changes rapidly, it has also made quick adjustments and is accelerating its journey in the new ocean.
03 Smzdm's Breakthrough in "Interest - driven Consumption"
Consumption is the means, and interest is the core. After realizing this, from the strategic direction to product implementation, Smzdm has launched a comprehensive reform centered around "interest."
The decision - making process of traditional consumption is simple and direct, mainly following the chain of "demand - decision - purchase."
In this model, search is the core. Overseas, it is reflected in the "search + independent website" model; in China, it highly depends on the search box of e - commerce platforms. In this extremely narrow and short chain, there is not much room left for content platforms, consumer communities, or shopping guide websites.
In recent years, consumption has become a journey ignited by interest. The starting point of the chain is not consumers' needs but the interests inspired by content, friends, or consumer communities. With the help of high - quality content, vague interests gradually condense into clear purchase targets, and enterprises can ultimately acquire high - quality users who can be converted in the short term and maintained in the long term.
The lengthening of the decision - making chain means that consumers no longer let themselves be swayed by commercial promotions but hope to take full control. They actively seek reliable channels to collect information. This change has provided development opportunities for platforms like Smzdm.
In GEN2, Smzdm focuses on "interest" in every aspect: from interest identification, content matching to solution provision, the platform is constantly increasing its efforts in the three key links of interest - driven consumption.
First is interest identification. Interests often arise in a flash for consumers, and identifying them is much more difficult than identifying needs. For example, an attractive landscape photo in a camping note may make users want to buy a whole set of camping equipment. Interests are hidden and changeable, and technology is necessary for their identification and tracking.
In February last year, Smzdm launched the AI shopping assistant "Xiaozhi," using a large - scale consumption model to help users make decisions more quickly. According to Wang Yunfeng, the Chief Technology Officer of Smzdm Technology, this shopping intelligent agent has a self - developed intention recognition model built - in. Behind this model are 120 million high - quality consumption - related training corpora and tens of thousands of rounds of dialogue data. Eventually, the platform can identify users' real interests from their fragmented behaviors, laying a solid foundation for subsequent conversions.
Next is content matching. Besides finding the right people, the platform also needs to communicate effectively. Therefore, it is not enough to find people with interests; it is also necessary to ensure that the pushed content "hits the nail on the head."
To deal with this uncertainty, Smzdm GEN2 deeply processes and analyzes the collected consumption content from the entire network through the AIUC engine. It extracts interest tags from 12 dimensions, such as consumption relevance, content reliability, information density, and author popularity, and then precisely matches them with user profiles. As the platform's understanding of users and content becomes more detailed, the matching effect between the two sides has been rapidly improved.
Finally, it is solution provision. Sui Guodong, the founder of Smzdm Technology, once acutely pointed out that there is a dilemma of "abundance means scarcity" in the current consumption decision - making field. Although there seems to be an overabundance of content, it has also led to a scarcity of high - quality content. When high - value information is submerged in the information flood, a large amount of rewritten and repetitive content invisibly increases users' decision - making costs.
The "gatekeeper" is a classic theory in communication studies. It originally referred to news editors as "gatekeepers" for information screening to ensure that people can obtain high - quality information. In the current situation where consumption information is of mixed quality, Smzdm also tries to become people's "consumption gatekeeper." By weeding out the bad and keeping the good from information on different platforms, it provides users with more valuable consumption information in one - stop service, which is obviously a current necessity for people's consumption decision - making.
Of course, Smzdm has also changed its content supply strategy. Combining the capabilities of intelligent agents and large - scale models, it tries to identify needs, integrate content through multi - round dialogues, and finally provide consumers with integrated consumption solutions, which is bound to be more user - friendly for consumption decision - making.
The ongoing consumption transformation from demand - driven to interest - driven is a proposition that requires grand strategies and meticulous tactics for platforms like Smzdm. In this wave, Smzdm, based on the long - term trend changes, combines the platform's characteristics and technological capabilities, and focuses on "interest - driven consumption" to gain an edge for future development.
04 Converting Interest Traffic into Consumption Traffic
Under the new consumption logic, Smzdm is quietly changing the temperament of its platform.
It has given itself a new positioning as an "AI - driven all - network interest - driven consumption guide." In addition to emphasizing technology - driven development, this positioning also reveals two details:
First, the emphasis on "all - network." Different from other platforms that focus on interest - driven consumption, Smzdm's relatively open identity as an all - network third - party can enhance the credibility of platform information. In the current situation where consumers want to take control of consumption, it helps to improve marketing effectiveness.
Second, the positioning as an "interest - driven consumption guide." This means that it not only positions itself as a consumption advisor to alleviate information asymmetry but also hopes to become an igniter of consumers' interests and a guide for people's lifestyles. This is a more important change for Smzdm, indicating that it is consciously getting rid of the "use - and - discard" tool attribute and seeking to bind users and the platform more closely through interest.
By using interest as a medium, the upgraded Smzdm attaches great importance to widely exploring users' potential interests and converting the "interest traffic" inspired through operational activities into tradable "consumption traffic" in batches.
For the spring renewal period, it launched a new product marketing event called "New and Interesting New Product Festival." Centered around consumption themes such as new mobile devices and new spring flavors, it helped brands in industries such as consumer electronics and food and fast - moving consumer goods complete in - depth product promotion and conversion.
The Internet circle effect is becoming a new path for brands to spread efficiently. Opinion leaders in the circles even have the ability to strongly promote consumption decisions. In response to this feature, Smzdm created a Q&A interactive IP called "Report Your Interests" for different circles, targeting interest circles such as food, wine, fishing, and camping, and promoting internal interaction and external spill - over effects among interest - based groups.
For marketing nodes such as industry exhibitions and major events in the technology and automotive industries, Smzdm, based on its long - term knowledge and talent reserves in relevant fields, systematically sorted out and compared category information through a combination of PGC and UGC and provided consumption suggestions. The traffic heat brought by hot events combined with high - quality content has enabled it to capture consumption traffic.
It is a well - recognized fact that there are three valuable resources on the Internet: traffic, data, and influence. Among them, traffic is the foundation, and data and influence are the keys to releasing the value of traffic.
For Smzdm, it uses data for identifying and matching users' interests and realizes value - added based on data through precise matching. In terms of enhancing influence, it relies on various operational activities planned by the platform to maximize the release of traffic value through operations. The correct thinking and clear planning have brought good results to the platform, and the interaction data of the above - mentioned operational activities generally increased by 30% to 300%.
Due to the significant improvement of the platform's capabilities, the upgraded Smzdm has gradually become an important platform for many brands to gather and operate interest traffic.
In the second half of 2024, when Samsung promoted new smart wearable devices in China, Smzdm became the main platform. Although it was a new product without a market foundation, it still achieved an overall exposure of over 16 million, winning a large number of seed users for the brand at the initial stage of product launch.
The sports brand Decathlon strengthened its brand image by shaping a lifestyle. On Smzdm, it operated traffic through the "search + brand zone" model: at the front - end, it used the traditional high - impact promotion model of search to gather traffic; at the back - end, it continuously penetrated core users by outputting brand stories, enhancing visual presentation, and launching user activities in the brand zone, forming a closed - loop from large - scale traffic to high - quality sales. During the highly competitive Double 11 shopping festival, Smzdm helped Decathlon achieve a much higher total sales volume than in previous years.
The change in consumers' consumption mentality from choosing the right and good products to choosing what they like is rapid and obvious. Consumers may still care about cost - effectiveness, but whether a product caters to their inner interests has become the key factor in the decision - making process. As consumers' self - gratification mentality becomes more prominent, the upgrade of Smzdm in response to this change is helping brands create more high - quality conversion opportunities.
05 Conclusion: "Skate to Where the Puck Is Going to Be"
Interest is becoming the new answer to "What's Worth Buying."
With the growth of people's disposable income, consumption is shifting from rational calculation to emotional resonance and from demand - oriented to interest - driven. This state is not a short - lived trend but will converge into a long - term and irreversible trend supported by social culture.
In this context, the connotation of "worth" is being redefined. Cost - effectiveness is just the tip of the iceberg, while interest is the key factor hidden beneath the iceberg, having a stronger influence on consumption decisions.
Facing this change, Smzdm, driven by AI, has established a platform strategy as an "all - network interest - driven consumption guide." It is no longer just an information intermediary in the consumption market but has truly transformed into a guide for consumption trends based on its influence on consumption.
