东北财经大学学报

有力整治“内卷式”竞争，是当前和今后一个时期推动产业转型升级和高质量发展的关键所在。供需不匹配是导致“内卷式”竞争的重要原因，但已有研究对电商平台如何通过趋势预测畅通经济循环、培育新型消费场景的理论探讨和案例分析还非常有限。本文从平台依托消费趋势以挖掘推动供给和需求动态平衡的角度出发，在梳理趋势经济的缘起、内涵与特征的基础上，分析其破局“内卷式”竞争、促进创新发展的作用机理，并结合小红书案例，探讨实践中趋势经济的作用和价值。本文研究发现，在消费的社会属性愈发增强的今天，价值创造的源泉不仅来自商品和服务的生产，更来自对流行趋势的预测和对消费者行为的引导。随着技术创新和社交媒体的发展，趋势的生命周期已大大缩短，趋势预测成为一个由消费者和算法共同驱动的去中心化过程。趋势在促进生产者和消费者实现创新和价值创造方面发挥着愈发重要的作用。趋势经济是品牌建设的催化剂，有助于推动新型消费扩容提质，并通过推动供需适配优化产能配置、通过挖掘真实需求促进产业创新，从而为企业摆脱“内卷式”竞争、迈向创新发展提供内生动力。本文提出，应从支持社交电商开展趋势研究、鼓励制造企业积极融入趋势经济、规范平台价格“内卷”行为等方面入手，推动形成优质优价的市场生态。

Effectively addressing “involutionary” competition is crucial for the current and future transformation, upgrading, and healthy development of industries. The mismatch between supply and demand is a significant cause of “involutionary” competition. However, few studies have explored the regulation of “involutionary” competition from the perspective of improving market mechanisms and better facilitating the circulation of supply and demand.This article starts from the perspective of the platform-driven trend formation, which promotes the dynamic balance between supply and demand. Based on the analysis of the connotation, origin, and characteristics of the trend economy, it theoretically analyzes the mechanism and path through which the trend economy addresses “involutionary” competition and promotes innovative development. Combined with the case of Xiaohongshu, it explores the role and value of the trend economy in practice. With technological innovation and the development of social media, the life cycle of trends has been greatly shortened, and trend prediction has become a decentralized process driven by consumers and algorithms. The trend economy is a catalyst for brands, helping to expand and improve new consumption, optimize capacity allocation by promoting supply-demand matching, and promote industrial innovation by mining real demand, thereby providing an endogenous driving force for the transition from “involutionary” competition to innovative development. Therefore, efforts should be made to guide social e-commerce platforms to conduct trend research, encourage manufacturing enterprises to actively embrace the trend economy, and effectively regulate price-based “involutionary” competition among platforms, in order to foster a high-quality, value-aligned industrial ecosystem.Compared to the existing literature, this study makes contributions in the following aspects. First, through empirical observation and a literature review, it systematically traces the theoretical origins of the trend economy and identifies a defining shift in consumption patterns in the social media era. This enhances understanding of the connotation of the trend economy and its characteristics in the digital economy era. Second, it comprehensively analyzes the theoretical mechanism through which the trend economy enables the transition from price-based “involutionary” competition to innovative development. This offers a novel perspective on addressing “involutionary” competition by facilitating the circulation of supply and demand. Third, by examining the Barncore Style on the Xiaohongshu platform as a case study, this article investigates the emergence, impact, and diffusion of the trend economy, thereby providing empirical evidence for understanding how the trend economy stimulates innovative development.The research unveils the formation of the trend economy and the theoretical pathway and inherent logic that drive industries from “involutionary” competition towards innovative development. It can assist policymakers in better understanding the role of the trend economy in promoting joint value creation between consumers and producers, thereby providing valuable insights for formulating policies that leverage the trend economy to address “involutionary” competition.