"Appearance anxiety" is endless, planting notes are flying everywhere, and medical beauty makes them fall into the "beauty trap"

After registering the oxygen App account, employee Xiao Liu (pseudonym) fabricated user reviews under the company's account and posted false positive content. For violating the provisions of the first paragraph of Article 8 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, the parties were fined 0.5 million yuan.

This is one of 10 unfair competition cases released by the State Administration for Market Regulation on October 25. In 2021, the State Administration for Market Regulation will carry out a nationwide special rectification of anti-unfair competition law enforcement in the field of medical aesthetics. It not only involves the elimination of falsehoods, exaggerated publicity and other ills, but also rectifies the situation of misleading the public in disguise through "soft text" and "planting notes" and other forms of implant promotion and false marketing.

Bought case

The aesthetic market is experiencing rapid growth. According to the "2020 Medical Aesthetic Industry White Paper" released by the medical beauty platform Gengmei App, the scale of China's pure medical aesthetic market reached 197.5 billion yuan in 2020, and 5150 new medical aesthetic institutions were added.

With the increasing popularity of consumer groups in the medical aesthetic industry, the consumption penetration rate has increased, and the number of young and new consumers who have just come into contact with medical aesthetics has increased. However, the characteristics of the medical aesthetic industry such as high single consumption price, complex professional knowledge, and large risks to be borne by decision-making errors make consumers mostly study "strategies" through the network before consumption, and "evaluation" is an important reference factor for consumers to make medical aesthetic consumption decisions.

It is based on these characteristics that "marketing" has become the main channel for medical aesthetic institutions to expand customers and improve performance, and fabricated cases and false praise have followed.

An industry practitioner revealed to the Beijing Business Daily reporter: "The marketing of the medical beauty industry is high information, and there is a picture and a truth. It is very common to swipe orders, and there are many cases on the Internet that can be bought. ”

Beijing Business Daily reporter tried to search for "medical beauty cases" on the e-commerce platform, and could easily find a number of products, including medical beauty before and after comparison case pictures, medical beauty good morning poster pictures, medical beauty clinic indoor environment maps and other types of materials.

The low availability of fake cases also makes counterfeiting easier. In the case of Taizhou Yixing Medical Beauty Hospital in Zhejiang Province, the law enforcement personnel found that the "Oxygen Zuzmc's Beautiful Diary 3.11 Breast Augmentation" and "The Beautiful Diary of the Last Love 6.15 Nose" on the party's new oxygen medical beauty platform were other hospital cases within the Yixing Group, not the real cases of the parties' hospitals. At the same time, the parties used the patient's image on the website for publicity, showing photos of the surgical process and post-operation effects, and using false cases to commercially promote themselves.

According to the provisions of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, the regulatory authorities ordered the parties to stop the illegal acts and fined them 250,000 yuan.

Live streaming "New Battlefield"

It is worth mentioning that after the rapid growth of 2014-2018, the growth rate of China's medical aesthetic industry has slowed down since 2019, and the epidemic has made medical aesthetic service providers who mainly open stores offline worse.

"The slowdown in growth has exposed some phased problems in the development of China's medical aesthetic market, such as the difficulty of profitability of small and medium-sized medical aesthetic institutions, and the mismatch between market supply and demand." From the demand side, it is still difficult for consumers to identify compliant and legal medical aesthetic institutions and qualified doctors, and some potential consumers still hold a wait-and-see state of medical beauty with frequent accidents, from the supply side, private medical beauty institutions have difficulty in obtaining customers due to the lack of medical and operational talents, and difficulty in maintaining customer feelings. Zhuang Shuai, founder of Bailian Consulting, told reporters, but this has also brought unprecedented opportunities to the online medical beauty.

"Online" is a new trend in the medical aesthetic industry. The "2020 Medical Aesthetic Industry White Paper" released by Xin oxygen pointed out that China's medical aesthetic market is showing a new trend, because the online speed of institutions lags far behind the online speed of beauty seekers, and a large number of beauty seekers are "suffering" high-quality medical beauty resources online.

As a new "top stream" in the field of carrying goods, live broadcasting has also rapidly popularized in the medical aesthetic industry and has become an important way of marketing. The reporter learned that there are special MCN institutions aiming at the field of medical aesthetics and achieving a single live broadcast of more than 100 million.

In Taobao's "Changing Beauty Live Room" channel, a number of medical beauty institutions have opened live broadcast rooms. For example, on the background of the live broadcast room of a brand medical flagship store, it is posted "look at the face to shoot xx link, send front + side photos and specific needs, 29.9 can be face to face".

Medical beauty live broadcasting has also become the focus of supervision. According to the notice of the State Administration for Market Regulation, in December 2020, during the on-site inspection of law enforcement officers, it was found that the parties carried out live broadcasts through personal live broadcast accounts registered on the Kuaishou short video App to promote the online sales of self-operated goods. In the process of promoting Class II disinfection products (non-pharmaceutical drugs and medical devices) labeled "Huayuan Secret Language Bacteriostatic Gel", the parties used therapeutic functional expressions, which actually misled consumers. For violating the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, the parties were fined 200,000 yuan.

Strict supervision to fill loopholes

The scale of the medical aesthetic industry has grown rapidly, but chaos such as the scarcity of professional talents and non-compliance of products has existed for a long time. An ophthalmologist revealed to reporters: "There are many patients in our hospital who have failed surgery in informal medical and aesthetic institutions, such as the failure of double eyelid cutting, resulting in incomplete eyelid closure, exposed keratitis and other issues. ”

In 2021, the State Administration for Market Regulation carried out a special rectification of anti-unfair competition law enforcement in key areas nationwide, severely cracked down on unfair competition behaviors such as false publicity, counterfeiting and confusion in the medical beauty market, investigated and handled a number of cases of unfair competition in the medical beauty market, focused on standardizing the competition order of the medical aesthetic market, and demonstrated the determination of the market supervision department to strictly rectify the chaos in the medical aesthetic market.

From January to September 2021, market supervision departments at all levels across the country investigated and handled 5,397 cases of unfair competition of various types, with a fine of 350 million yuan. Among them, there were 71 cases involving false publicity in the field of medical beauty, and the amount of fines and confiscation was 3.55 million yuan.

While strengthening law enforcement, relevant laws and regulations are also being introduced. On August 27, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) published an announcement on soliciting opinions on the Guidelines for the Enforcement of Medical Beauty Advertising (Draft for Solicitation of Comments).

The Draft Opinions propose to clearly stipulate that medical beauty advertisements are medical advertisements, and advertisers must obtain a medical institution practice license in accordance with the law to publish or entrust the publication of medical beauty advertisements; the publication of medical beauty advertisements must obtain or check the "Medical Advertisement Review Certificate" in accordance with the law and publish them in accordance with regulations.

In addition, the focus will be on cracking down on advertising chaos such as using the patient's name or image to compare or prove the effect before and after diagnosis and treatment, creating "appearance anxiety", and using advertising endorsements to recommend medical beauty.

Beijing Business Daily reporter Tao Feng and Wang Chenting