E-shopping in the age of online celebrity

A critic of evolutionary psychology or sociobiology, Anne Innis Dagg wrote a book entitled ‘Love of Shopping’ Is Not a Gene, but I sometimes wonder if she had got it all wrong.

I can spend hours studying details about stuff like earrings or bags online. Once armed with sufficient information, I ponder, in the fashion of Hamlet: To buy or not to buy?

Over the past year, the frequency of such soliloquies has increased, thanks to Xiaohongshu, or Little Red Book, a Chinese e-commerce app.

Xiaohongshu helps Chinese consumers to buy overseas goods directly. It offers shopping tips as well. I particularly love its social media feature that allows users to interact with each other by way of shared images and comments on the merchandise bought.

I no longer trawl various online fora for product reviews. Xiaohongshu has made it passe.

Little Red Book also helps me to stay up-to-date with e-shopping trends. One such trend is the advent of wanghong or internet celebrity.

There are posters of wanghong on Little Red Book. Out of sheer curiosity, I once tapped on one of them. It led me to a livestream of a 21-year-old college student named Coco Zhan, who is based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

As it transpires, Zhan is now my favorite wanghong. The superfast broadband internet, my octacore smartphone and online alerts help me to view her posts the moment they are published.

Coco Zhan comes across more as a girl next door than an A-list actress. I find her warmly offering advice, shopping tips, so on. She shares a great deal about her dayto-day life.