Case study of WeChat

Introduction:

Nowadays, since the rapid development of internet and network, the needs of individuals for interaction and communication have increased a lot, thus various social network services play important roles in individuals’ daily life. One important type of the social network services is social instant messaging service. Qiu et al (2016) state that “social instant messaging services are emerging as a transformative form with which people connect, communicate with friends in their daily life-they catalyze the formation of social groups, and they bring people stronger sense of community and connection” (p. 311). In general, social instant messaging service is a method that individuals can use for communicating and connecting with others, furthermore, by using this service, individuals can form a better understanding of connecting and community. In this paper, a particular social instant messaging service will be analyzed: WeChat, the most influential one of China and is spreading to all over the world. During the analysis, first of all, the current status of WeChat will be presented; secondly, the main features of WeChat will be introduced; thirdly, the special strategy of WeChat will be studied; then the SWOT model will be used to critically analyze the operation of WeChat. Finally, there will be a brief conclusion.

Analysis:

Current status:

WeChat (Weixin in Chinese) was launched by Tencent the giant in social media area in China in 2011. It has developed at a very high speed: in the first half year of 2015, the active users of WeChat has been increased to 600 million every month (Staykova and Damsgaard, 2016). Below is a graph about the number of active users of WeChat per month from the second quarter of 2011 to the fourth quarter of 2015:

 Graph 1: Statista, 2016

In terms of the global status, there is a graph about the global ranking of the most popular mobile messaging apps with active Millennial users in the third quarter of 2014, WeChat was the fifth one with 9% of the worldwide active Millennial users:

Graph 2: Statista, 2016

Moreover, there is a graph about the most popular mobile messenger apps in Asia in the fourth quarter 2015, with regard with the active users every month:

 Graph 3: Statista, 2016

In the second graph, it can be seen that in the third quarter of 2014, WeChat took up 9% of the active Millennial users while Line took up only 1% lower than WeChat. However, by the third graph, the monthly active users of WeChat in the fourth quarter of 2015 was more than three times of the amount of Line. It can be assumed that WeChat has developed at a very high speed comparing with many other apps.

Main features:

First of all, by creating accounts in WeChat, all the users have their own profiles, where their demographical information is presented, such as their user name, age, gender and region; moreover every user has their own address book where their friends’ accounts are displayed as a contact list. Identification is needed for adding each other as friends into the contact list, which makes WeChat a more private social network. Dong et al (2014) summarize that there are many creative functions in WeChat, for instance “Voice chatting, Texting, Video chat, Group chat, Moments (social), Look around and Shake” (p. 273). Voice chatting, texting, video chat and group chat are different ways to achieve messaging and communication. According to Qiu et al (2016), chat groups are key components of WeChat, WeChat users are allowed to create chat groups and only the group members who are invited to the groups by the creators can have access to those groups, a trend of invitation-only has emerged through this feature. Users can communicate with several friends at the same time through WeChat groups. Moments (social) is a kind a friend circle, through which you can post and share your experiences and ideas with texts, photos or videos, meanwhile, you can get access to your friends’ posts. Look around is used to search for people nearby who are also searching people to meet. Shake is used to connect to people who are also shaking at the same time. Besides, WeChat also offers services such as sticker shop, P2P payments, WePay, and public accounts like City Service and WeSport; services that are offered by partners such as ordering taxi of Didi Dache through WeChat Wallet and booking movie ticket; and services that are provided by public accounts holders (Staykova and Damsgaard, 2016). WeChat users can use WeChat to create online shops with few requirements, they can use WePay to connect to their bank accounts, which makes payment much easier; and they also can get access to various information through public accounts.

There are also important features that are relating to the special use of the WeChat platform. Zhang (2015) claims that WeChat, which provides the platform connecting business consumers and sellers, plays an important role in e-commerce. From the perspective of sellers, they can make good use of WeChat to promote their products based on their consumers’ needs, meanwhile, through the process of promotion, they can have a better understanding of consumers’ needs. From the perspective of consumers, they can use WeChat not only for getting the information of products timely but also communicating and sharing feedbacks timely with respect to relevant business issues, for instance, the quality of products, the after-sale services (Zhang, 2015). In addition, Jin et al (2015) illustrate that WeChat can be considered as a crucial platform for promoting the publicity of enterprises since WeChat pays particular attention to the participation of their users. Above all, WeChat can be seen as a convenient platform, through which sellers and consumers can communicate with each other and also consumers can communicate with other consumers. Therefore, it can be used to promote publicity of firms, and WeChat is more influential than other platforms. Jin et al (2015) explain that the way that WeChat users use to spread information through their friend cycle, makes the information more reliable. Individuals may consider the information they get from their friends more reliable than others.

In addition, WeChat also provides a platform to many official institutions for creating official public accounts, through which the institutions can communicate with individuals. According to Geng (2016), the public accounts of WeChat can be regarded as a model with respect to new media public diplomacy, which refers to the expression of interaction and communication between foreign people and the government of a country, in this case WeChat is beneficial to developing the public diplomacy strategy of China and China’s foreign strategy; for example, in China some foreign countries’ embassies have created their official accounts in WeChat in order to communicate with Chinese people.

Strategy:

The slogan of WeChat is that it is a kind of life style, it tries to meet the needs of daily life as many as possible and make individuals’ daily life more convenient. In my opinion, there are five main aspects within the successful strategy of WeChat. Firstly, WeChat focuses on satisfying consumers’ needs efficiently. Dong et al (2014) claim that one main advantage of WeChat is that it can be aware of the needs of their users very quickly; then make implementations based on their users’ current needs at a high speed; moreover, the life cycle of their products from designing to deploying are very short. This efficient way of developing their products and services, makes WeChat be fresh constantly to their consumers and helps it attracts more customers. Secondly, WeChat develops their products based on Chinese culture since it derives from China and its main market is China, which makes it be accepted and popularized quickly since its establishment in China. According to Dong et al (2014), “the overall success of WeChat lies on the trade-off between inclusiveness and creativity resulting from a Chinese culture perspective” (p. 274). One key factor that promotes the success of WeChat is that it produces creative and inclusive products and services based on Chinese culture, which can satisfy the particular needs of Chinese consumers and attract more and more consumers.

The other three main aspects of its successful strategy is categorized based on its functions: its main basic function of messaging; its function of offering platform for business sellers and consumers; and its function relating to providing platform of official public accounts. First of all, in terms of the main function of WeChat-messaging, Qiu et al (2016) state that through internet, users of WeChat can receive and send multimedia messages, which include texts, images, videos, audio and even information of users’ location; furthermore, the messages are communicated in real-time. Secondly, in terms of the business function, WeChat users can use WeChat platform to sell and buy along with sharing information and experiences, since WeChat tends to be private social network it plays an important role in promoting the publicity of sellers. Thirdly, referring to its function of providing platforms for official public accounts, as discussed above, one of its significances is to promote China’s public diplomacy strategy and foreign strategy. In this case, in order to communicate with Chinese people, more and more foreign countries’ embassies will pay attention to WeChat and may create their official accounts in WeChat, correspondingly, WeChat can attract Chinese users who value the platform of gathering relevant information from the official accounts, thus the influence and popularity of WeChat will be improved. In addition, the above pathway of collaborating with WeChat can also be useful for other official institutions that want to communicate with citizens, this can be seen as a win-win strategy.

SWOT analysis

Strengths

• WeChat is more intelligent and flexible comparing to other social networks, due to its diversity, uniqueness and convenience (Jin et al, 2015). In my opinion, the key strength of WeChat is that it is a kind of combination of almost all the features that their consumers need, such as creative ideas, diverse products and services, convenient benefits to consumers and being unique comparing with other social networks.
• Free
• High speed of spreading information
• Gathering consumer needs and producing relevant services efficiently.
• Influential power towards all WeChat users, including sellers, consumers, institutions and citizens.
• WeChat has made good use of CSR (corporate social responsibility) programs to build a positive brand image. For instance, it used to run a WeChat campaign which was very successful: “Saying No to Ivory Products” (DeLuca et al, 2016, p. 331). With this campaign, WeChat showed its attention to ethical issues and gained a positive reputation, furthermore, the big influences of WeChat on public events have also been displayed.

Weaknesses

• Services and products are mainly based on Chinese culture, which may block their global expansion
• Safety issues, for instance, criminals may make use of the services of WeChat like the sharing of users’ location to commit crimes.
• Safety issue relating to money, criminals may get users’ bank information through users’ WeChat accounts.

Opportunities

• The trend of globalization promotes the global expansion of WeChat
• The uniqueness of WeChat comparing to other social networks
• The services WeChat provides can make people’s daily life more convenient, not only for Chinese users but the worldwide users.

Threats

• Threat of being copied
• Relative low requirements for entering the social media market

Conclusion:

To sum up, WeChat has developed dramatically both within and outside China. It plays important role not only in China’s market but also in global market. In my opinion, the influence of WeChat at global level will keep increasing in the near future. However, besides improving and strengthen the strengths and opportunities WeChat has, it also needs to pay attention to its weaknesses and threats. In order to achieve the global expansion, I think WeChat needs to design and produce more services and products targeting different markets, moreover, the safety issues needs to be attached high importance.

Reference lists:

DeLuca, K. M. et al (2016). Constructing Public Space| Weibo, WeChat, and the Transformative Events of Environmental Activism in China. International Journal of Communication, 10, pp. 321-339.

Dong, D. et al (2014). Web Services in China. Handbook of Research on Demand-Driven Web Services: Theory, Technologies, and Applications: Theory, Technologies, and Applications, pp.267-286.

Geng, Z. (2016). An Analysis on the US New Media Public Diplomacy Toward China on WeChat Public Account. Sociology, 6(1), pp.18-27.

Graph 1 (2016) Statista. [Online] http://www.statista.com/statistics/255778/number-of-active-wechat-messenger-accounts/ (Accessed 23 June 2016)

Graph 2 (2016) Statista. [Online] http://www.statista.com/statistics/388220/mobile-messenger-app-reach-millennial/  (Accessed 23 June 2016)

Graph 3 (2016) Statista. [Online] http://www.statista.com/statistics/250548/most-popular-asian-mobile-messenger-apps/ (Accessed 23 June 2016)

Jin, H. et al (2015). Factors Influencing Customer Participation in Mobile SNS: Focusing on Wechat in China. Indian Journal of Science and Technology, 8(26), pp.1-8.

Qiu, J. et al (2016). The Lifecycle and Cascade of WeChat Social Messaging Groups. In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on World Wide Web, pp. 311-320. International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee.

Staykova, K. S. and Damsgaard, J. (2016) Platform Expansion Design as Strategic Choice: the case of WeChat and Kakao Talk. Twenty-Fourth European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), İstanbul, Turkey, pp.1-16.

Zhang, P. (2015). Research on Strategy of Model Innovation of WeChat Marketing. Joint International Mechanical, Electronic and Information Technology Conference, pp. 474-477.