Examples of how the culture of commerce is changing—from luxury to mass market.
The market has entered a new phase. Not just “digital” or “conscious” but behavioral. Brands no longer create demand through communication. They build an architecture of actions where every decision—from product to cultural gesture—becomes part of a unified behavior strategy.
Luxury, mass market, tech companies, celebrity brands—all are restructuring their logic of actions. Today, success belongs not to those who declare values louder, but to those who manage their behavior architecture: when a brand designs not campaigns, but a system of relationships capable of adapting to context and time—in business, culture, and perception.
This article provides a brief overview of key signals from recent months: from CHANEL to Shein, from Haut.AI to Unilever, showing how brands are reshaping their presence and why this has become the new market norm.
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Why Changes Occurred
Cultural changes. The market is saturated with an excess of and sameness in products, brands, messages, and promises. They have started to copy each other, creating information noise.
Commerce has lost the effectiveness of old tools.
In the 1980s, brands needed just two things—a name and an advertising budget. Television and print provided the necessary frequency of contacts, which formed up to 70% of brand recall and recognition. (Nielsen data)
In the early 2000s, this model still worked. Advertisements and magazines ensured visibility, but even then, the first disruptions appeared: digital channels grew, attention fragmented, and massive campaigns stopped ensuring loyalty.
Today, a consumer encounters a brand in dozens of places—on social media, marketplaces, in retail. Algorithms differ, contexts vary, noise is immense. It’s a question of basic mechanics: recognition → repetition → choice.
Technology has advanced: AI analytics, behavioral data, and consumer habit research have emerged. But many companies still manage the brand through “campaign ideas” and “creative inspiration.” As a result, there’s no system maintaining brand stability across all market points.
Buyers have become more sensitive to promises, calls, and slogans, and more selective as information becomes more accessible. Trust is built not on slogans but on reviews from the environment and influencers.
So even big companies need reconstruction today—to ensure the brand is perceived uniformly in different markets—Paris, New York, or Seoul, teams speak the same language, and the strategy works as a system, not a series of inspirations.
What Is the Architecture of Commercial Behavior
The architecture of commercial behavior emerged as a response to the changes in the very principle of interaction between brand, product, and people.
Commerce no longer revolves around a product or communication; it revolves around the brand’s behavior in the market: how it builds presence, makes decisions, sets reaction tempos, designs product formats, and interacts with the community.
It’s not a marketing trend but a shift in the trade development direction. A new commerce branch has started where the brand becomes a living system, managing behavior in real-time—its own, market, and consumer behavior.
Thus, a new market discipline emerges, combining strategy, culture, and consumer psychology.
The architecture of commercial behavior is not a positioning model but a business structuring method as a series of predictable actions that build trust, interest, and cultural presence. — BNames
This is the key difference from classic brand management, which was built around communication, messages, and promises.
Now the meaning is created not through words, but through the integrity of behavior, manifested in strategy, decisions, and cultural actions of the brand.
Brand Examples in Light of Recent Events
Let’s consider a few examples demonstrating the theory in action. Through specific situations and brand actions, the restructuring of commerce is visible.
CHANEL Show – A Change in Behavior Strategy
Paris, October 2025. The first show by Matthieu Blazy as creative director marked a moment when the brand began to change the rules of its market presence.
Instead of showcasing legacy as the foundation of CHANEL’s status, the focus was on relevance: returning to Gabrielle Chanel’s ideas—comfort, freedom, and simplicity—presented in a modern, dynamic form.
This was not just a new show.
Blazy restructured the brand’s behavior strategy: the collection became part of a cohesive system where product, marketing, visual style, and positioning work in harmony.
CHANEL no longer reproduces DNA, but manages its dynamic presence.
The brand moves away from being a legend shown within established frameworks and rules, transitioning to working with the current context—changing communication forms, accents, and behavior as an active global market player.
The new luxury is not eternity, but the ability to stay alive.
Gucci and “The Tiger” — The Gap Between Form and Substance
Gucci released a short film The Tiger featuring major celebrities.
After a series of public and internal challenges—declining sales, changes in creative leadership, legal disputes, and market criticism—the brand found itself in a position where external activity no longer compensates for internal contradictions.
The project featuring global celebrities appears to be an attempt to regain audience engagement and emotional trust, but reveals a major gap: between intense visual form and a not fully built semantic and operational foundation.
Within the company, managerial contradictions, staff turnover, and uncertainty in positioning continue.
Gucci’s issue today isn’t communication, but structure—the absence of a coherent action system that connects meaning, behavior, and business.
The Tiger became not a solution, but a symptom: an example where external activity no longer saves.
No innovations or high-profile collaborations compensate for the lack of trust and consistency.
Real brand transformation will begin not on the screen, but in how the company builds processes, values, and interaction with its own people.
Visuals, PR, and marketing no longer compensate for behavioral instability.
Victoria Beckham — Architecture of Commercial Behavior
Victoria Beckham is not just creating another collection or launching a film.
First—the show at Paris Fashion Week in early October 2025. It marked the brand’s return to contemporary fashion and reinforced a visual code of femininity that Beckham has been cultivating in recent seasons.
Then, the House of VB pop-up opened at Selfridges—a space blending fashion and beauty. Here, exclusive pieces from the capsule collection The Dressing Room and limited products from Victoria Beckham Beauty, which have already become the brand’s commercial core, are presented. The project includes experience details, from a doorbell with her voice to a specially designed staircase.
Simultaneously, a documentary story premieres on Netflix, which premiered on October 8 in London, where Beckham speaks openly about the company’s debts and how the brand was “on the verge.”
In parallel, an exclusive line is launched on Net-A-Porter—synchronizing offline space and online channel at the time of premiere.
Three steps—the show, the space, the series—form a single system of commercial behavior: from screen to sales point. Victoria Beckham unites product, media, and physical presence in a consistent interaction path with the audience.
In her strategy, it’s evident how luxury transitions from product launches and image campaigns to a sequential behavior architecture: where each point, movement, action—digital, retail, storytelling—enhances the previous.
The brand builds behavior that can be traced and repeated.
Unilever, L’Oréal, Shiseido, Estée Lauder: “Scientific Youth” as a New Model of Trust
The beauty industry is undergoing a systemic overhaul.
If brands once promised an effect, now they prove it.
Science is no longer a communication element—it’s now part of the business model and governs market behavior.
Unilever, L’Oréal, Shiseido, Estée Lauder are integrating bioengineering, neuroscience, and sensory technology into their beauty-system architecture.
- Unilever launched a direction where skincare is connected not just to appearance, but emotional state. Company scientists found a link between skin microbiome and stress levels—and on this basis, a new concept is formed: care as state management, not just age sign correction.
This is a step from “anti-age” to “psycho-bio-comfort”—where the product works not only with skin but with a person’s feeling.
- L’Oréal is developing the concept of intelligent beauty — products and devices that adapt to the skin’s condition and the surrounding environment.
For the company, science is a way to sustain trust and to prove that skincare can be measured, not just promised.
- Shiseido focuses on skin immunity — the interaction between the skin’s immune system and stress. The ImuGeneration technology and the Ultimune line became the first commercial systems built on evidence-based physiology.
- Estée Lauder Companies concentrates on biomarkers of aging and microcirculation, collaborating with Harvard Medical School and the MIT AgeLab.
- The formulas of Estée Lauder and La Mer are developed around biomarkers of restoration and fibroblast activity to improve cellular respiration and skin energy.
Across all these examples, science becomes the architecture of market behavior.
Beauty is no longer a promise — it becomes a measurable system for managing the skin’s condition.
“Scientific youth” is not a marketing positioning, but a new operational model of trust.
Formulas, tests, laboratory data, and transparent R&D processes are now part of commercial behavior.
Science becomes a cultural code of trust — transparent, reproducible, and measurable.
AI as a Standard in the Culture of Commerce
AI is no longer just a tool.
Brands are learning to integrate AI into their behavior — to speak with greater precision, to listen more attentively, and to maintain a sense of authenticity.
Haut.AI launched Skin.Chat — a virtual skincare consultant that analyzes photos and skin condition to provide personalized recommendations.
When a person receives advice not from advertising but from a dialogue, trust begins to form.
Carita (L’Oréal Luxe) implemented AI-based skin diagnostics at the Maison de Beauté in Paris.
The technology does not disrupt the tradition of French skincare — it enhances it. Precision becomes part of the ritual itself.
At INNOCOS Geneva, experts noted that “AI does not replace creativity — it removes guesswork.”
AI eliminates randomness and makes predictable what used to rely on intuition.
A new form of luxury emerges — personalized certainty, resulting in confidence in one’s own choice.
Yet there is another side.
The Forever21 case with AI-generated models showed that speed and flawless imagery do not always inspire trust. Sometimes technology makes a product feel too far from reality.
Lancôme, Shiseido, and Estée Lauder are integrating AI into diagnostics, microbiome analysis, and product selection.
They verify their promises through data — and this becomes a new form of respect for the customer.
AI consultants represent a new format of interaction between brand and person.
Behavior enters a cognitive dimension — brands begin to act through algorithms of trust.
Commerce is moving into a cognitive format — managing perception through AI-driven data.
Shein in France — a crisis of the old model.
The situation around Shein in France revealed not just a debate about ecology or labor conditions, but a gap between the old and the new type of market behavior.
More than 79,000 people signed a petition against the opening of Shein’s first store at BHV Marais.
This protest was a reaction not only to Shein, but to a system in which the product loses value due to excessive volume and pace. Previously, this model was seen as clear and successful — maximum reach, fast sales, constant releases.
Today the same scheme is starting to face resistance.
The company received large fines from European regulators and tightened internal controls, but its operating principle remains the same: high frequency, low price, an engagement algorithm.
The brand manages consumer behavior through speed and accessibility, but does not build trust or long-term value. Shein sells not a product, but a ritual of constant newness — a short action cycle that holds attention.
What used to be called “strategy” in business is turning into a behavior mechanic: observe → react → purchase → repeat.
And in this Shein is not an exception — it has simply taken to the extreme what many do: built a market where rhythm is more important than meaning.
The European commercial model held for a long time on the idea of sustainability — restrained consumption, provenance, responsibility.
But the clash with the new approach showed: value systems do not withstand the speed of algorithms.
Today a brand’s resilience is measured not by sales volume, but by its ability to regulate its own behavior — how it handles attention, production, and market pace.
Shein became not the cause of the crisis, but its catalyst. The market, for the first time on a mass scale, reacted not to the product, but to the structure of a brand’s commercial logic.
Commerce is shifting from managing choice to taking responsibility for consequences: for production, culture, and perception.
Celebrity brands (SKKN, Rare Beauty, etc.) — the retreat of name-driven labels
The decline of SKKN, COSMOSS and other celebrity lines marked a break in consumer culture: a name has stopped being a currency of trust. Buyers no longer respond to a persona if the brand’s behavior does not convey transparency and consistency.
1. “A name has stopped being a currency of trust.”
Over the last 2–3 years the market has been moving away from the “cult of personality” in FMCG, fashion and beauty. According to NielsenIQ (2024), 64% of Gen Z and Millennial consumers do not consider a personality the main criterion for choosing a brand.
McKinsey Beauty Report 2024 notes declining conversion for celebrity brands alongside growth of independent labels with clear operating logic (ESG, supply transparency, inclusivity).
2. “Reputation has become an operational metric, not a fame asset.”
Yes, name and reputation remain capital, but they are becoming an operational metric.
For example, Estée Lauder and L’Oréal already track the KPI “trust performance” — a metric that includes operational indicators (delivery, reviews, CX errors).
3. «The market is moving from personality to system.”
The term “systemic brand” has emerged — brands with a built commercial-behavior architecture (principles, standards, feedback loops).
The trend is visible in beauty, wellness, fashion: sustainability, personalization and traceability replace the “big name.”
4. “A name no longer guarantees trust.”
The buyer no longer responds to a name if the brand’s behavior is inconsistent and not backed by action. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer 2025: over 70% of consumers trust brands when “actions match stated principles,” not because a famous person endorses them.
The market is shifting from identity via personality to identity via behavior.
**All these examples show: commercial behavior is becoming a new operational function of business. Neither marketing, nor PR, nor product alone can hold trust — this is the task of a brand’s systemic architecture of actions.
Author
Practical conclusions for business
All these signals add up to a pattern:
Сommercial behavior is becoming the new growth strategy.
What used to be called “branding” or “marketing” now functions as an architecture of actions, where everything is interconnected: product, retail, communication, cultural activity, technologies, relational ties.
1. Behavior becomes the core function of brand management.
Commerce is built not around product or communication, but around a sequence of actions that create trust and recognition.
The key task is to design a system of brand behavior, not campaigns. Every step of the brand should be a logical continuation of the previous one.
2. Product = an instrument for managing perception
Each product launch is an update of relations with the market. The product truly becomes an element of the architecture of behavior — confirmed by the cases of Unilever, L’Oréal and Beckham. Through the product one can see how the company relates to the market and to the customer, and stands the test of time: precision, relevance, transparency.
The product is no longer the final point, but part of a single chain of interactions.
3. Culture becomes part of strategic management.
The brand must act equally precisely in different countries, channels and formats — without losing meaning or quality of execution. Brands that know how to work with the cultural code create new markets. The ability to read cultural signals becomes a business competence.
4. Communication = the environment of behavior.
Communication is now not just a way of promotion, but a way to organize context. Communication should show how the brand acts, not what it says. Meaning works through the brand’s aligned actions in culture and business.
5. Consistency is the key factor.
The brand needs to act equally precisely at every touchpoint — in product, design, content, retail and communication. Even a minor inconsistency reduces trust and hinders growth.
The main capital today is reproducibility.
6. Managing relationships is a market competence.
Relationships with customers, partners and the team are not emotional marketing, but a managed system in business. The brand needs to understand which types of ties it creates and how it maintains them. This becomes a separate business function, not an addition to marketing.
7. Technologies and science become part of the architecture, not a separate tool.
AI, biotechnology and analytics manage the quality of decisions, making interactions precise and reproducible. Brands that integrate evidence-based technologies and measurable performance indicators form a new operational model of trust.
8. Responsibility is a new form of efficiency.
A model in which success is measured only by sales volume loses stability.
Long-term commercial performance depends on how the brand manages the consequences of its actions: production, attention, speed and cultural effect.
9. Reputation is created by actions.
Trust is built not on advertising slogans and messages, but on observable behavior. It is more important to see stability of decisions than to hear statements about values.
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a practical material is available on implementing a commercial behavior architecture system in the beauty, fashion, wellness sectors and adjacent areas.
Conclusion
We have entered a period where marketing has ceased to be communication. It has become an architecture of behavior. The brand’s image is now formed not through PR, but through a system of actions that connects product, retail, technologies and culture into a single managed structure.
Architecture of Commercial Behavior – is a new operational discipline.
It unites marketing, product, retail and culture into a single system. Successful brands act according to a reproducible system:
observe → adapt → reproduce → strengthen.
This is a branch of development — a new type of commercial culture — predictable, reproducible and measurable.
In the coming years, the ability to manage behavior will become the main criterion of a brand’s resilience. This approach will become the standard.
