实体商业内容化趋势加速 抖音正在成为商场增长的重要入口

This article centers on the fact that brick-and-mortar retail has entered an era of content-driven transformation, and Douyin has become the core channel for physical malls to acquire customers and drive conversions. General readers can find plenty of practical information for consumption and event participation from it.

1. Many malls now launch novel, viral events such as the "Snack Stealing Contest" and "Bad PPT Contest". Most of these events first gain traction with hashtags on Douyin. Interested readers can follow relevant hashtags on the platform to get real-time updates on events and join in new trending activities.

2. Most consumers now make consumption decisions on Douyin in advance. Malls release exclusive group-buy deals and discounted packages on the platform, so readers can find these offers ahead of time and redeem them directly in-store, which is more cost-effective than paying full price offline.

This article analyzes the ongoing content transformation trend in brick-and-mortar retail, offering substantial actionable insights for brand marketers and operators.

1. Consumer trend shift: Consumer decision-making has moved upstream — most shoppers complete their initial screening on Douyin before leaving home, and the share of impulsive offline consumption has dropped significantly. Brands need to adjust their marketing cadence to reach target users online in advance.

2. Marketing inspiration: Brands can adapt physical malls" approach of generating buzz on a low budget: launch creative, shareable events with low production costs that can deliver hundreds of millions of impressions and viral traffic without heavy upfront investment.

3. New channel growth opportunities: Brands can leverage malls" Douyin content matrix, paired with brand-exclusive group-buy offers, to build a full funnel from content seeding to transaction conversion. Leveraging mall traffic and Douyin's transaction capabilities can drive more in-store visits and sales. Brands can also study Sassoon's approach to ongoing content operations to build a sustained private traffic pool.

This article outlines the new growth model of brick-and-mortar retail integrated with Douyin, providing multi-dimensional actionable insights for sellers operating within physical malls.

1. Industry shift: Consumer decision-making now happens online in advance, and a large share of general mall footfall fails to convert into in-store traffic for individual shops, widening the gap between traffic volume and actual sales. Sellers can no longer rely solely on organic offline footfall and need to proactively adapt to the content-driven trend.

2. Growth opportunities: Douyin has become the core growth engine for physical malls, and the platform offers strong support for commercial complexes. In the first half of 2026, the total payment GMV of commercial complexes on the platform grew 240% year-over-year. Sellers can tie into their mall's Douyin marketing activities, match their own product offers to capture online traffic, and boost in-store conversions.

3. Actionable takeaways: Sellers can encourage in-store sales staff to create content and join the mall's Douyin account matrix to lower customer acquisition costs. They can also leverage Douyin Search to capture active user demand, convert short-term buzz into long-term recurring footfall, and focus on aligning content with customer offers to avoid driving traffic without translating it into actual sales.

This article outlines the emerging trend of content transformation in brick-and-mortar retail, offering insights for digital transformation and business expansion for manufacturers that supply physical malls.

1. Product demand shifts: Physical malls now rely heavily on topic-driven events to drive consumption, and demand for event-exclusive products and themed co-branded items has grown significantly. Factories can develop products tailored to these event needs to secure more in-store collaboration opportunities with malls.

2. Insights for digital transformation: Brick-and-mortar retail has fully validated the path of content-driven upfront customer acquisition. Factories can adapt this approach to move away from the traditional "produce first, find channels later" model, reaching both B2B buyers and end consumers via online content in advance, and adjusting production to match actual market demand.

3. New business opportunities: More physical malls now treat content operations as a core daily capability and launch multiple themed marketing events throughout the year, which demand a large volume of cost-effective event products and materials. Factories can target this demand to open up new business growth lines.

This article sorts out the current status and core pain points of content transformation in brick-and-mortar retail, providing clear industry reference for marketing and operation service providers serving the physical commerce sector.

1. Industry growth trend: The content transformation of physical commerce is accelerating. More malls no longer treat Douyin just as an advertising channel, but seek to build full-funnel in-house operation capabilities, driving continuous market demand growth. In the first half of 2026 alone, 436 new malls opened official accounts on Douyin, and a large number of existing malls have not yet built mature content operation capabilities.

2. Core client pain points: Most malls currently face the problem of recovering overall footfall but weak conversion: the penetration rate of general public area footfall to individual stores is less than 20%, and the basket rate has long stayed below 20%. The core pain points are a lack of capability for upfront content marketing and an inability to connect content to end-to-end transaction conversion.

3. Solution directions: Service providers can build capabilities around three core areas: first, helping malls plan low-budget, high-exposure topic-driven events; second, supporting malls to build a layered account matrix and a sustainable mechanism for regular content production; third, helping malls connect the full funnel from content seeding to in-store redemption to improve conversion efficiency.

Based on multiple case studies of physical malls, this article summarizes the core demands of brick-and-mortar retail for lifestyle service platforms, and provides valuable reference for platform operation and development.

1. Core business demands: Physical malls are no longer satisfied with platforms only providing traffic advertising services. They need platforms to offer an end-to-end integrated capability covering content distribution, transaction hosting, search traffic, and redemption conversion, to support the full process from content seeding to in-store consumption.

2. Platform operation priorities: Douyin Lifestyle's integrated capability has now been validated by the market. In the first half of 2026, 436 new commercial complexes joined the platform, and GMV grew 240% year-over-year. Platforms can further step up recruitment of commercial complexes, roll out tailored services for malls of different scales: provide matrix operation support for large head chains, and offer node marketing tools for regional projects.

3. Risk mitigation: Platforms need to improve the usability of tools such as group buying, redemption and search to lower the operation barrier for small and medium-sized malls. They also need to help malls align content with transaction conversion to solve the industry-wide pain point of high traffic but low conversion, so as to continuously increase penetration in the brick-and-mortar commerce sector.

This article reveals the latest developments in the transformation of China's brick-and-mortar retail, summarizes the new growth logic, and presents multiple mature case studies, offering high research value for industry analysts.

1. New industry developments: The core competitive advantage of physical commerce has shifted from chasing event hype to integrating end-to-end capabilities across content, transaction, and in-store experience. The growth logic has evolved from the traditional "attract customers to store" model to "content-driven upfront acquisition - offer-based conversion - in-store redemption". Content platforms such as Douyin have transformed from pure marketing channels to core operation hubs for physical commerce, and the content transformation trend is accelerating rapidly.

2. New industry challenges: Physical commerce generally faces a disconnect between footfall and consumption. In 2025, over 85% of shopping malls in China saw footfall recover, yet the penetration rate of footfall to individual store visits remained below 20%, and retail footfall dropped an average of 8% after large marketing events. The traditional growth model relying on brand updates and discount promotions has become ineffective.

3. Business model research resources: The article summarizes three replicable mature models: the full-funnel integration model for leading chain malls (exemplified by Wuyue Plaza), the ongoing content沉淀 model (exemplified by Sassoon), and the node marketing model for regional malls (exemplified by Jiu Guang Department Store), providing clear samples for future industry research.