以跨境购物攻略工具起家的小红书，如今已转型生活方式内容分享平台，不仅培育了多元活跃的UGC内容生态，还发展出有代表性的种草传播模式：用户在平台中通过正向口碑内容推荐产品，潜移默化影响受众认知与消费决策，对其“种草”。为了进一步实现从前端内容种草到后端购买转化的商业化闭环，小红书也展开了对其电商模式的探索。然而，在电商平台竞争白热化的背景下，流量获取和价格竞争成为争夺市场的主战场，电商平台竞争呈现出高度同质性。在此环境下，新兴电商参与者若想在竞争中分得一杯羹，差异化电商发展策略探索便尤为关键。基于此，本文以小红书为研究对象，旨在通过对其现有商业模式的梳理，识别其电商发展的差异化机会点，并运用定性与定量研究方法，探究这些因素如何影响顾客的平台购买意愿，从而为电商领域的差异化发展提供策略参考。研究首先通过案例分析法对小红书的发展历程及其商业化进程进行梳理，识别其电商模式的优势与挑战，并提出了对其差异化优势，即对种草传播内容深入研究的必要性。其次，为明确种草传播内容特征，研究采取定性的深度访谈方法，在结合编码方式的基础上对小红书种草传播内容特征进行了概念化提炼，识别出独特性需求满足、专业性、可信度、趣味性和临场感等关键维度，为实证分析提供了理论模型和研究假设。此外，研究还调查了消费者在小红书平台购物的动机，为平台管理实践提供了指导。进一步地，研究通过问卷调查的方式对理论模型进行实证检验，研究了种草传播内容特征对顾客平台购买意愿的影响机制。研究发现，独特性需求满足、专业性、可信度、临场感等因素均通过正向影响产品感知价值促进顾客的平台购买意愿，而趣味性对产品感知价值和平台购买意愿的影响未得到实证支持。研究还发现，社交媒体参与度能够正向调节种草传播内容专业度、可信度对产品感知价值的影响，并进一步影响顾客平台购买意愿。从理论创新角度，研究拓展了内容特征领域的研究维度，也为电商平台差异化发展的理论研究提供了新视角。研究为小红书平台提出了针对性的管理建议：发挥小红书平台独有种草内容优势，重视内容临场感与独特感建设；把握内容优势，深化垂类电商建设能力；同时针对垂类中腰部达人开展内容种草培训；并持续完善电商体系建设，以助小红书提升电商转化效率。此外，本文也为内容创作者及品牌方提出建议，助力创作者更有效实现种草内容转化，并建议品牌方利用小红书平台进行品牌拓新与用户连接，实现品牌价值最大化。

Starting as a cross-border shopping guidance tool, RED has now transformed into a lifestyle content sharing platform. It has not only cultivated a diverse and active user-generated content (UGC) ecosystem, but also established a representative “Zhongcao” marketing model. In this model, users recommend products through positive word-of-mouth content on the platform, subtly influencing the audience’s cognition and consumption decisions, a procees known as “Zhongcao”. To further achieve its commercialization from front-end Zhongcao to back-end purchase conversion, RED has also explored its e-commerce model. However, against the backdrop of fierce competition among e-commerce platforms, traffic acquisition and price competition have become the main battlefields for market contention, leading to a high degree of homogeneity in e-commerce platform competition. In this environment, it is crucial for emerging e-commerce participants to explore differentiated e-commerce development strategies to secure a share in the competitive market. Based on this, this paper takes RED as the research object, aiming to identify its differentiated opportunities in e-commerce development, and combine qualitative and quantitative research methods to explore how these factors influence customer platform purchase intentions, thereby providing strategic references for differentiated development in the e-commerce field.The study first conducts a case analysis of RED’s development history and commercialization process to identify the strengths and challenges of its e-commerce model and highlights the necessity for an in-depth study of its differentiated advantages, which is Zhangcao. Secondly, to clarify the content characteristics of Zhangcao, the research adopts a qualitative approach through in-depth interviews, conceptualizing the characteristics of RED’s Zhongcao content characteristics through coding, and identifying key dimensions such as align with consumers’ need for uniqueness, professionalism, reliability, perceived playfulness, and sense of presence, providing a theoretical model and research hypotheses for empirical analysis. In addition, the study investigates the motivations behind consumers’ choices to shop on RED, offering practical guidance for platform management. Furthermore, the study empirically tests the theoretical model through a questionnaire survey, examining the influence mechanism of Zhangcao content characteristics on customers’ platform purchase intentions. The findings reveal that factors such as aligning with consumers’ need for uniqueness, professionalism, reliability and sense of presence positively all positively affect product perceived value, which in turn promotes customer platform purchase intentions, while the influence of perceived playfulness on product perceived value and platform purchase intentions is not supported. The study also finds that social media participation positively affects users’ perception of professionalism and credibility, which further positively impacts customers’ product perceived value and platform purchase intentions.From a theoretical innovation perspective, the study expands the research dimensions in the field of content characteristics and provides a new perspective for the theoretical research on differentiated development of e-commerce platforms. Based on the research findings, the study puts forward targeted management suggestions for the platform: Leverage RED’s unique advantages, focusing on the construction of content on sense of presence and uniqueness；it needs to leverage its content advantages, deepen its construction capabilities in segmented e-commerce field; at the same time, it should carry out Zhongcao training for mid-waist level content creators in segmented field and continuously improve the e-commerce system construction to help RED enhance its e-commerce conversion efficiency with its content advantages. In addition, the paper also provides suggestions for content creators and brands, helping creators more effectively achieve the transformation of Zhongcao, and also suggests that brands regard RED as a method for brand innovation and user connection to maximize brand value.