CC BY
75
Section 2. Accounting
https://doi.org/10.29013/EJEMS-20-3-12-17
Yi Chen,
Grade 11, Vanke Meisha Academy, China E-mail: [email protected]
IS SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING EFFECTIVE IN CHINA?
Abstract. Social media has developed very fast globally, with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in the western countries and WeChat and QQin China. It naturally became a marketing channel among other digital marketing methods. Given the short experience of Chinese to the internet and social media, is social media an effective marketing method? Upon surveying over 700 consumers, this study finds the answer to be NO, or at least Not Yet. Finding better ways to use this rich marketing platform other than high frequency advertising is essential to the future of social media marketing in China.
Keywords: Social media marketing, WeChat marketing, Social Media Marketing in China, Consumer Acceptance.
I. Introduction billion, which is quivalent to 71% of total population
Social media has a significant influence on our (Hootsuite [6]).
The popularity of social media naturally sparked the industry ofsocial media marketing or advertising. Social media advertising is the second largest segment of digital advertising market with a market volume of $89,905 million in 2019, following Search Advertising with $127,862 million spending (Statista [12]). In China, the ad spending in social media advertising amounts to $14,526 million, ranking the second in the global revenue ranking in 2019 (Statista [12]). As revenue from social media advertising increases, the awareness of the potential of social media are recognized by social marketing companies, who start to help business advertise to reach their customers. 88% of social marketers have acknowledged the importance for their brands to provide customer service through social media, and 80% of them said that their key marketing strategy is to increase engagement across social channels (Sprout Social, 2018). Additionally, 90% of
lives. According to a recent report on the global state of digital, there are 3.484 billion active social media users around the world as ofJanuary 2019, achieving a 45 percentage penetration (Hootsuite, [6]). The worldwide accessibility to internet enables more people to communicate through various online platforms. Based on the global active social usage penetration rate as of February 2019, 64% of the internet users accessed Facebook, 45% accessed Whatsapp, 32% accessed Instagram and 21% accessed Twitter (Clement [3]). While many popular social networks are available in multiple languages and have a wide range of users across countries, there are also social platforms designed for a specific community and provide local content to their users. In China, there are three major social media platforms: WeChat, QQ and Weibo. By January 2019, the total number of active social media users in China reached 1.007
brands use social media to increase brand awareness and 77% of brands expect their use of social media to increase (Hootsuite [6]).
Despite the potential of social media marketing, 58% of brands find it difficult to measure the effectiveness of social media advertising (Hootsuite [6]), and only 3% of Internet-using adults say they trust the information they get from social media (Pew Research Center, 2018). Therefore, it is important to understand the consumers' acceptance of such pervasive marketing tool in order to define success.
II. Literature Review
Marketing has changed rapidly over the decades and it continues to change in this century. In comparison to other business area, marketing is a relatively young concept emerged in the early 1900s. This introduction will examine the marketing tools before and after the technological leap when computers, phones and other creations were developed. The introduction will trace the history of marketing until recent years and serve to provide a general understanding of the technological marketing methods we have today, specifically social media marketing.
History & Types of Digital Marketing
As the advancement of technology, the term "digital marketing" first emerged in the 1990s. The common forms of online advertising include search engine marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, viral marketing and so on (Benson [2]). Archie, the first search engine, was created in 1990. Following that in 1993, Wandex became the first ever search engine that was accessible for the World Wide Web. In October 1994, AT&T launched the first banner ad on Wired's Website. Fast forward to 1999, a search engine company GoTo.com introduced the first pay-for-placement search advertising keyword service (Cook [4]). At the same time, banner ads continued to gain popularity as companies started to focus on their desired demographics and led to the beginning of target ad placement. The creation of pop-up, pop-under and
display ads in 1997 eventually led to standardized pop-up blocking features for most web browsers by the early 2000 s. After 2010, the value of online ads are discovered by most marketers. Today, online ads are so commonly used for advertising purposes that 91% respondents of a recent research thought that ads today are more intrusive and compared to two or three years ago (Hub Spot, 2018). As customers' dissatisfaction of intrusive ads increases, marketers are focusing on developing more targeted and exclusive advertising experience that offers relevant content for future consumers.
Social Media Marketing is relatively newer than the other online channels. However, marketing in the form of social media has become the second largest in the digital marketing. Advancing by an incredible rate, social media advertising is a market that did not exist a decade ago, but is projected to generate $11 billion in revenue by 2017 (Karr [8]). The history of it traces back to the 2000 s. The prevailing social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter were first introduced to the world in between 2002 to 2006. Today, more than 90% of the marketing executives utilize social media, 76% of businesses use social networking to achieve their marketing objectives, and 77% of brands expect their use of social media to increase (Newberry [6]). Due to censorship on western social media, China developed its own social networking platforms. Local social networking sites such as Wechat, Weibo and QQ are attracting millions of users; therefore, despite being unable to access the global market, China is still a major social media market. As one the most popular social media platforms, Wechat is a messaging app developed by Tencent, one of China's top technology companies. Wechat is primarily used as a social networking app, but it also contains many other recreational features. Because of its inclusiveness, it gained millions of users shortly after it is launched in 2011. Wechat Moment is one of the many functions of Wechat. It provides a platform for users to share their updates either with texts or pictures.
Key Factors of Consumers' Acceptance of Social Media Marketing
The concern over privacy is one of the top factors influencing a consumer's acceptance of social media marketing and its impact was found to be negative, since consumers felt that the information provided to the third-party e-retailers may not be private and could be used for purposes they do not wish for (Nadeem [11]). Despite the its popularity, social media still remains as a rather untrustworthy media, because of its interactive and utilitarian features. Building trust or credibility is essential then. Credibility is the beliefs or trusts of consumers toward specific products/services (Xu [13]). In general, products and services generally foster connection between consumers and an organization to build credibility. Even though online transactions are increasing, people remain skeptical about online transactions. For marketers, trust building has to be the utmost consideration in communications with consumers (Mishra & Tyagi [10]).
Consumers' brand preference is another factor affecting their acceptance of the method of marketing, in turn affecting their purchasing decision. The self-image congruity reflects a consumer's brand preferences and satisfaction. Consumers with stronger self-image congruity are more inclined to the brand and become more satisfied with the brand as compared to those with lower self-image congruity (Jamal & Goode [7]). An individual's emotional attachment to a brand will predict his commitment to the relationship with the brand (Mishra & Tyagi [10]). Similarly, in the context of wechat retailers, self-congruity will predict a strong attitude toward a frequently purchased and reliable retailer.
III. Methodology
In this study, a target consumer was defined as someone who had purchased products under the influence of WeChat marketing, since WeChat is the biggest social media in China. In order to gain better insights, a survey was used to collect data measuring the effectiveness of social media marketing. The
survey was created through Wen Juan Xin, an online survey website, and was shared through URL links, QR codes, and social media Sharing.
The questionnaire consisted of 10 multiple-choice questions for all respondents and 3 selective questions that were only asked if respondents indicate that they had experience as a WeChat retailer. The only demographic information collected was on the respondent's age group. For WeChat retailers, information was collected on their frequency of advertising via social media, while for all respondents, there were questions inquiring about their opinions on and experience of the social media marketing activities they encountered.
Initially, the survey was distributed online, however, which resulted in respondents clustering in two age groups: one in10-20 years old (primarily from my circle of friends and their friends of similar ages) and one in 40 and above (primarily from my parents' social circles). Realizing this potential drawback, a series of actions took place in order to correct this problem. In the second round of distribution, the survey was sent specifically to people in the 20-30 and 30-40 year old range. Furthermore, I also did a live distribution by going to different shopping malls to interview respondents in the desired age groups. As a result, a total of 731 responses were collected and the study achieved a more balanced distribution of ages groups.
IV. Results
The 731 respondents participants had a fairly even distribution across age groups, by the three rounds of effort to distribute the survey strategically. As shown in Figure 1, the percent of respondents from different age groups is fairly evenly distributed, with 10-20 years old making up 35.6%, 28% above 40 years old, 17.6% from 30-40 years old, while 17.5% from 20-30 years old.
Social Media Has Become the Most Popular Method of Online Marketing
Another important finding from the survey is shown in the bar chart as in Figure 2 below, showing
the prevalence of social media marketing to people in keting out of all the other ways of marketing, and the China. Respondents reported that social media mar- result shows that 677 out of 731 respondents have keting is the most commonly seen method of mar- encountered social media marketing.
Figure 1. Age Distribution of Respondents. Percent of respondnets by age group
0 200 400 600 800
Figure 2. Types of Online Marketing Respondents Experienced
High Frequency Social Media Ads Could Hurt as everyday with several posts, but most of the re-
However, the effectiveness of such marketing spondents (68%) would choose to block the posts
technique is questionable. Most retailers or web from retailers' or web store owners' Wechat ac-
store owners post moments at a frequency as high counts.
Figure 3. Percent of Respondents Willing to Block Advertising Moment Posts
Social Media Had Little Impact on Purchasing Decisions
The survey results suggested that Chinese consumers are not influenced much by social media when it comes to purchasing decisions. When asked whether advertisement would ultimately motivate
consumers to purchase different products, 80% of the respondents purchased products based on their personal preferences, 74% would examine the utility of the product before purchasing, while only 42% respondents would consider friends' recommendations.
Figure 4. Factors Influencing Consumers' Purchasing Decisions
When asked to rank their willingness to purchase after viewing Wechat ads, only 12% selected 8 and above on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being not likely and 10 being very likely. The majority of the respondents remain 'cool' or indifferent.
Table 1. - Willingness to purchase after Viewing WeChat Ads
Willingness to Purchase
1-4 33.60%
5-7 54.40%
8-10 12.00%
Conclusion
The response of the Chinese consumers showed that social media marketing has become commonly seen. As the currently most used social media app in China, Wechat not only dominates people's social lives, but also has become an advertising channel for retailers trying to affect people's purchasing decision. However, the consumers aren't buying the efforts as seen in the survey that consumers' willingness to purchase products remained low. Thus, besides the popularity of social media marketing, its effectiveness is still very low.
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