Content-Led Commerce Takes 55% of China Online Beauty Sales

Content-led commerce, where demand is generated by video, livestream and creator content rather than by search, carried 55% of China's online beauty sales across three of the largest marketplaces in January to July 2026, up from 28% in the same months of 2022, according to Moojing Market Intelligence. The four promotional months of May, June, October and November still carried two-fifths of the year's online beauty sales in 2025.

This article covers the second chapter of the full report, which asks where, and in which months, Chinese consumers now buy their beauty products, and what the promotional calendar does to the premium end of the market.

Method and scope: observed online sales across three of China's largest online marketplaces, modelled by Moojing Market Intelligence from listings and captured prices, 2022 to July 2026. Marketplaces are anonymised and grouped by how demand is generated, as content-led and established marketplace commerce. This is not the total market, and offline retail is not covered at all.

How much of China's beauty spending goes through content-led commerce?#

Content-led commerce carried 55% of China's online beauty sales across three of the largest marketplaces in January to July 2026, up from 28% in the same months of 2022, according to Moojing Market Intelligence, while established marketplace commerce's share went from 72% to 45% over the same four years, with the two channels crossing over in 2025.

The comparison is made like for like, on January to July of each year, and it shows a retail scene that has held its size while the channel it is bought through has changed in a very short time.

Exhibit 5. Source: Moojing Market Intelligence, observed marketplace data. Marketplaces are anonymised and grouped by how demand is generated, not by name. January-July of each year.

Our data do not show brands pulling back from content-led commerce because of the heavy discounting there, and since this relatively new channel took the largest share of beauty sales so quickly, we believe brands are still watching it closely and re-examining the margins they make there.

Which month is the biggest for beauty sales in China?#

October has been the biggest month for China's online beauty sales since 2024, carrying 13.4% of that year's sales and 12.6% of 2025's, according to Moojing Market Intelligence. November had led in 2023 with 15.2%, and the peak moved a month earlier as the pre-sale for Double 11 pulled demand forward into October.

Over the same period, the gap between the biggest and the smallest month of the year narrowed from 9.8 points to 6.6. This suggests that consumers are spreading their beauty purchases more evenly across the year than they used to, and that a brand planning its calendar around a single November spike is planning for a market that has since changed shape.

Do the promotional months still matter?#

The four months that hold China's two big shopping festivals and their pre-sales, May, June, October and November, carried 42.9%, 42.8% and 41.4% of annual online beauty sales in 2023, 2024 and 2025 respectively, according to Moojing Market Intelligence. The peak has spread across this promotional bloc without ever leaving it.

The flatter calendar does not mean that promotions matter less, and one practical consequence is that a measurement taken outside those four months is a measurement of the trough.

Does festival discounting hurt premium beauty in China?#

Premium's share of China's online beauty sales was 4.2 points higher in the four promotional months than in the other eight, at 25.4% against 21.2% across 2023-2025, according to Moojing Market Intelligence. The gap was positive in each of the three years, so we see no sign that festival discounting has hurt premium.

By year, the premium gap was +3.1 points in 2023, +4.9 in 2024 and +4.4 in 2025. During the bloc, the mass tier's share falls 8.3 points while both bands above it gain, luxury by 4.1 points as well as premium. That argues against the most obvious alternative explanation, that luxury items are simply being discounted down into the premium band, although it cannot exclude some movement of that kind. We define premium as a unit price of CN¥ 360-1,080 (~US$ 50-150), applied identically to every segment and marketplace.

Exhibit 8. Source: Moojing Market Intelligence, observed marketplace data, three online marketplaces, 2023-2025, whole beauty category. Promotional months are May, June, October and November.

The data can show the change in mix but not the intent behind it, which is why we describe the finding as premium taking a bigger share of sales rather than as shoppers trading up. We believe, all the same, that Chinese consumers are treating festival discounts as an opportunity to upgrade their beauty purchases. Nor is the result an artefact of inflated festival list prices, because re-running skincare sales for one Double 11 month on one marketplace with coupons fully deducted moves premium's share by only −0.17 points, an order of magnitude too little to produce the gap.

Which beauty products depend most on the promotional months?#

Serums and essences take 52% of their annual online sales in China's four promotional months, the most of any skincare function, against 36% for lip colour, according to Moojing Market Intelligence. Averaged over 2023-2025, premium's share rises inside the bloc for every skincare function, by between 2.3 points for gift sets and 9.3 for masks.

Lip colour is the one product where the promotional months do not lift the premium share. The bloc also has a cost that shows up in the month after it, since in most skincare functions July sales run 20-42% below the April-May run-in and December sales 18-51% below September-October. A launch timed into the bloc therefore meets a shopper who is ready to upgrade, whereas a launch timed just after it meets a much quieter market.

What this means for a brand's China calendar#

For a brand planning its year in China, the two findings in this chapter sit together, because the channel that carried more than half of online beauty sales in January to July 2026 , while the four promotional months still decide how much of the year's premium business lands at all.

The function-by-function detail behind both, together with the coupon test and its method, is set out in the full report. Our China beauty market intelligence page sets out what else we cover in the category.