Over the past decades, due to the prevalence of internet and intelligent devices, social media platforms have been ranked the most significant communication channel, in which consumers can exchange consumption knowledge and share information with each other. According to Adweek (Shea Benett), globally, Internet users have five social media accounts on average; while around 91 percent of internet users aged from 16 to 64 have at least one account.  Moreover, since social media always have cooperation with advertisers, offering advertisers opportunities to target their users based on their demographic information uploaded to the media, people are much easier to find there are overwhelmed by attractive advertisement; the life style and consumption tendency of their peers also indirectly have influence on their consumption behavior.

It is worth noting that females are not born to be sensitive to their appearance, clothes, or cosmetics, though they have long been shaped as having innate preferences to beauty and fashion. Influences from their peers and social media should never be underestimated. For instance, very often people find girls became more interested in dressing up after their entry into university; it is also very common that females who involved more in social activities tend to pay more attention to their appearance.

Douglas and Isherwood (26) suggest that consumption signifies the self-value and self-image of consumers, symbolizing their experience, values, beliefs, competence, and achievements. Therefore, through their impact on the values, norms, life styles, and psychology embraced by females groups of certain cultures, mass media can have significant influence on female’s consumer behavior. For instance, by presenting “ideal images”—— a beautiful slim woman, a celebrity wearing high-end clothes or cosmetics, or a woman with happy family——the media caters the consumption psychology of female successfully; on the other hand, information on social media may also evoke or strength females desire for beauty, thinness, success, a happy family life, and other feminine felicity.

Several correlational studies examined the relationship between media usage and young women’s body image concerns (Fardouly 38-45). Most recent researches suggested that social media users have more body image concerns than that of non-users. Modern media have more portrait pictures than full-bodied pictures, which provide more opportunities for women to make facial comparison with others. As the more frequent comparison may result in more dissatisfaction on their own face, the media indirectly drive women to seek improvements from cosmetics and dressing skills, stimulating them to consume related commodities.

Celebrity influence has been introduced to illustrate consumers’ behavior and has been widely used in social media advertising for a long time. Since famous brands only invite handsome and famous models, actors, or other celebrities to be their spokesmen, they deliver the message to consumers that users will be like these famous handsome people if they use their products. Beauty, fame, success, distinctive, and happiness, these are just what modern females eager for. Take beauty for example, females are prone to attach more importance to their appearance than males, this is due to the long term patriarchy in human history: in the past centuries, being more beautiful than others had been one of the most reliable guarantees for female to seek protection from males. Despite patriarchy has been declining gradually, the feminine preference has been maintained, and individuals obtained satisfaction from their consumption for beauty. Companies hence are able to attract quite a few consumers with the fantastic dream-life they promised.

One of the utmost factors why social media can deliver values and evoke individual’s eager through images, models, and stories roots in the fact that commodities themselves are embedded with certain connotations, and these connotations have been attached to personalities and life styles by society. The social media, when presenting the images and stories to the public, actually strengthened the potential consumers’ recognition between the commodity and the ideal personality (or life style). Meanwhile, people who have already purchased the products also delivered related messages to other people around them and appealing more to consume (Elliot & Wattanasuwan 131-144). To name only a few, Chanel stands out other brands by its pursuit for noble, elegance, simplicity, passionate, and exquisiteness. People have similar basic values and whishes about their lives, which usually includes: happy (a decent work, a happy family, and a happy marriage), harmony, beautiful, elegant, wealthy, free, confidence, have high social prestige, and etc. It is the normal case that large brands always attached their products with several kinds of these basic common values, so consumers are more likely to purchase from them.