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According to Penguin Intelligence’s research report, the number of people who using the WeChat is on the increase since WeChat releases in 2011 and the number of monthly active users has exceeded 700 million by the end of the second quarter of 2016.In addition, according to CNNIC’s survey, there is an increase of users of WeChat whose ages are between19 and 30 more than 50 percent in several years. And 52.92% WeChat users have bachelor degree or above. Thus, the WeChat marketing is far from achieving its potential due to reluctance of youth group to engage in its use.
Since the rise of WeChat, academic research is still in a relatively early stage. Based on the theory of motivation and behavior, Maliang (2012) studies the relationship between motivation and usage behavior of WeChat users. He believes that the user's motivation can be measured from the two dimensions of user characteristics and the characteristics of social members of WeChat users. The user's motivation can influence the user's behavior by influencing the behavior intention. The empirical results show that, in addition to perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, entertainment, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control significantly affect the user's intention using WeChat.Chenpan (2012) finds that the traditional perceived usefulness is not a good explanation for the intention of WeChat users. Social impact, motivation and privacy concerns are the three important dimensions that influence the adoption of WeChat.Wangxiaoyu (2012) considers subjective norm is the most important factor that affects the user's behavior. For users, “useful” and “easy to use” is more important than entertainment.Xiongsha (2012) analyzes the demographic variables of perceived usefulness, ease of use, perceived risk and the influence of network externality to express gender, age, educational background and description of single user have effect on adoption WeChat.Wushuangru (2013) adds two variables: perceived entertainment and network externalities. The important role of perceived entertainment and network externality on user's attitude is verified.
WeChat marketing must be built on the basis of user adoption of WeChat so that enterprise can utilize features of WeChat. In this paper, the author examines a large amount of literatures and organizes literature to find that the research on driving factors of consumers using WeChat are based on the technology acceptance model, combined with the characteristics of WeChat and related theories, such as the theory of network externality, the theory of perceived interest and so on, and then introduce new variables to build a more realistic theoretical model. It has been proved that the main reasons for the user to use WeChat are entertainment, external influence, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use.
These studies ignore important factors such as privacy and trustworthiness (belief in benevolence, belief in the competence, belief in the integrity) that are shown when people use WeChat.
WeChat online platform for public service marks the beginning of WeChat for commercial services,so many scholars and practitioners begin to pay attention to the use of WeChat and business functions. Zhangyan (2013) analyzes the WeChat marketing model and its implementation principles, and that the key point of the realization of WeChat's marketing strategy is to interact with the information sharing and precise positioning of the customer base. From the aspects of the communication mechanism and social effect of WeChat's public platform, the author (Liyang, 2014) analyzes the attributes and advantages of WeChat's public platform, and advocates that the government and enterprises should make reasonable use of the platform of media communication. But there is no recommendation based on the structural analysis model about WeChat marketing for enterprise.