Consumer Behaviour on Social Networking Website
content 1 Background1 2 Motivation and Value2 2. 1 Attributes2 2. 2 Outcomes2 2. 3 Values3 3 Reference group3 3. 1 Aspiration reference group3 3. 2 Informal group4 4 Culture and consumption5 4. 1 Supranational culture5 4. 2 National culture5 4. 3 Subculture5 4. 3. 1 Family6 4. 3. 2 Language6 5 Conclusion6 1 Background Social networking has brought a great change in to the way people build relations with others. These sites are online platforms where users can create profiles to provide personal information, exchange individual ideas and share their interests with the others.
Through social networking sites, people can keep in touch with friends despite the long distance and daily bustle. In this way, networking sites change the old communication pattern that people used to communicate face to face. In addition, more internet users accept this new way to build their social ties. According to the Pew Internet’s report on social networking(2011), the number of people using social networking sites raised from 34 of internet users in 2008 to 59% in 2010. Weibo, the second-largest social networking site in China, can be used as a good example to clearly demonstrate this huge success.
It operated by SINA corporation and launched in August 2009. As a microblogging platform, Weibo enables customers publishing, broadcasting and achieving instant information based on their relationship. It does not take too much time for Weibo to get a large number of users. On the second quarter financial report released by SINA Weibo 2012 (cited in LU, 2012), there are 368 millions registered users and 36. 5m daily active users on Weibo by the end of June this year. The first driving force of Weibo to attract massive users is its ideally integrating the functions of Twitter and Facebook.
Weibo require people to publish posts within 140 Chinese characters and enables people to view embedded pictures and media without leaving the original page. The second appealing feature of Weibo is its Micro topics page that groups up all tweets on a certain topic. Similarly, the hottest trends categorization page and the famous people collection page, named Board of Fame and Hall of Celebrity respectively, are third attributor to the success of this site. In following, the means-end chain theory, perceptual model and the self will be applied to explain the achievement of Weibo: Motivation and Value Gutman (1982) presents the Means-end chain that consumer buying behavior determines by fulfilling desired values which could be obtained from the consequence of enjoying the product or service attributes. Desire values could be obtained due to satisfaction of customers in product or services attributes. More specifically, the reason why people consume a certain product/ service is that the nature of the product/ service can generate some outcomes that can achieve individuals’ values. This theory can be used to illustrate the success of Weibo. 2. 1 Attributes
Each product has its own attributes. However, as a microblogging service, the attributes of Weibo is different from that of physical products. What has been provided by the service, rather that what it looks like, is the features for Weibo. According to Sohn and kim (2012), seven features can be used to identify social networking sites: information, share, communication, interaction, entertainment, intimacy and connection. However, in this case, interaction with other users can be regarded as a two way communication and connection to their friends can be described as the result of communication.
Therefore, main attributes for Weibo are information, communication and entertainment. Regards to information, each profile contains personal information like hometown, interests and schools, etc. And individuals can publish feeds about what they think and what they have seen. Users can possibly follow everyone who they are interested in, like super star, corporation CEO, organization. Then, all the new feeds will be shown once customers log on their account. Meanwhile, people can Retweet the message they like, providing such information to their friends who may not know it. By this way, Weibo provides much information for its users.
The second function is communication: users can send immediate message to have chat with friends. Besides this, the opinions of customers are clearly expressed via commenting and replying upon a specific feed. With providing a two way communication among users, people can also enhance their offline social network. Lastly, Weibo provides entertainment functions for users. For instance, there is a medal reward system, where medals can be earned by some simple actions like tweet containing a certain word. Similarly, a gaming portal consisting of various mini web games is provided by this site. 2. 2 Outcomes
After experiencing all functions of Weibo, customers can enjoy serval results. Firstly, people can widen their horizon of knowledge and expand their social network through information attribute. As numerous consumers from all fields of life have opened accounts in Weibo, people can get huge amount of information like business news, social issues and fashion trends. And through sharing personal information and emotions in profiles, Weibo makes it easy to find friends with the same interest. Secondly, with various ways to communicate with others, it is convenient for customers to sustain offline relationships and strength online friendships.
Finally, with a variety of entertainment activities, hanging around Weibo have become a good way for recreation among netizens. 2. 3 Values As above-mentioned attributes and outcomes offer a clue, people consume this microblogging service with the hope to achieve these values: belonging, fun and entertainment, warm relations with others, being well respected, self-respect and security, based on the nine consumer values by Kahle(1989). Firstly, Maslow (1943) defines belonging as a feeling of accepted by other members in a community. As in Weibo, individual can be recognized as a unique person by other users through personal page.
Then, all new friends and old friends form a special community for that user. What the user post will receive friends’ comments, serving as a indicator of acceptance. Next, people can obtain pleasure and recreation in their lives on Weibo. Having a chat with friends, sharing and viewing opinions on current affairs, playing mini online games, and seeing what their friends are doing can make consumers have a rest from their works or studies. Thirdly, people can enhance friendships by using Weibo. Viewing others’ feeds can provide users information about friends’ interests, happiness and sorrows.
People can know clearly what to talk about with each friend. Furthermore, customers can feel respectable from friends. In Weibo, people show their concerns about what you post by viewing and commenting, even retweeting when they like it. 3 Reference group Reference group means groups that have influence on an individual’s attitudes, behavior, beliefs, opinions and values (Thompson & Hickey, 2005). If people in reference group have a positive attitude towards a certain brand, they can use their power to attract more users for that brand.
Therefore, it is essential for one brand to figure out reference groups that exert effects on its target customers and to give a good impression on those groups. In the case of Weibo, the company has successfully used two reference groups, which are aspiration group and informal group, to increase user number. 3. 1 Aspiration reference group Those people who are admired by the public, like actors, athletes, business people, make up the aspiration group (Solomon et. Al 2010). Many companies have used these celebrities in their advertisements or endorsements to promote its brand.
Not surprisingly, Weibo have adopted this tactic along its development to appeal more users. At the initial testing stage, Weibo enhanced its brand awareness by sending out exclusive registration codes to celebrities. The SINA company firstly invited notables, opinion leaders and industry leaders, who are existing customers of SINA blog, to open account in Weibo. Then, each invited celebrity would be asked to send out 20 special invitation codes to his/her friends, encouraging them to log in Weibo. Then, Weibo used those available notable accounts to attract massive fans to open accounts on Weibo.
Consumers hope to get up-to-date information about their idols from following idols’ Weibo profile. “I was a early adopter of Weibo. ” said Iris, a Chinese girl from Management major in Leeds University, “I opened my Weibo account in November 2009. Wanting to know more about my idol–Ashin, a Taiwanese singer, is the main stimulation for me to register in Weibo. With just two or three sentences in a feed, Weibo keep me informed about the daily routines of my idol and let me feel more closer to his life. ” As another attraction to customers, Weibo guarantees authenticity of idol accounts to customers.
All those celebrity accounts would be verified through real-name system before opening, and be added “V” after their user names to distinguish with ordinary users. Furthermore, owing to facilitate users to find their idols easily, Weibo gathered all these approved accounts into one page, named Hall of Celebrity. Until March 2012, there are 165,000 celebrity accounts in Weibo. On 2nd December 2012, the number of fans for the top one celebrity is over 27 million. As can been seen from these features and data, Weibo has paid huge attention on reference groups and gained plenty of users from these groups. . 2 Informal group Besides using aspiration group, Weibo took advantage of informal group to acquire more users. Thanks to more involvement in others’ everyday lives, informal group poses tremendous effects on their consumer behavior, such as whether or not using social networking sites, which specific site to be used. Weibo, just as other social networking sites, want to enable consumers to get connected with their offline friends and meet new friends with same interests. So as to be successful, large customer database should be provided for new users to find friends.
Most of Weibo users firstly know this networking sites from their friends. Another three users’ experiences are used to support this statement. Juliet, a Chinese girl in Advertising and Marketing in Leeds University, said, “I knew Weibo from several friends’ recommendations. They had already opened accounts. With sharing feelings and interesting news no more than 140 characters, my friends found it user-friendly and amusing. So they hoped I could join with them. After one trial, I fell in love with this site. And I have recommended this site to my friends who have not had Weibo account yet. The same with Juliet, other two users opened their accounts because of their friends’ influence. They said, “It is just a habit to keep logging into Weibo to see new feeds from friends. And, if I have not used Weibo while others have, I would feel very outdated. And I also persuaded some of my friends to use Weibo. ” As stated above, individual can be influenced by his/her reference group to register in Weibo, and then become one member of reference group to alter other’s attitude. With this process goes on, Weibo gets an increasing number of users, which leads to its success. Culture and consumption Culture is the learned and shared beliefs and values that influence the formation of attitudes and behaviors among members of a society(). There are three different level of culture: supranational culture, national culture and subculture. The success of Weibo can be explained by these levels. (Baldwin, 2006) 4. 1 Supranational culture Supranational culture aspect can indicate that the success of Weibo is not a exception. Before the launch of Weibo, Twitter, an American microblogging service, has be prevalent in a global scale, with over 18 million users in 009 (Wolfe, 2011). With global growth of internet usage, people have shared a cosmopolitan culture with same beliefs: time-conscious(Hongladarom, 2005). Caring more about time has a strong impact on the habit of writing and reading. People are more willing to write and read posts of daily lives within few sentences. That is a big driving force to the invention of microblogging sites, which provide people to publish feeds in just 140 characters. 4. 2 National culture In this level, because of its Chinese interface, Weibo is exclusively popular in China.
The alteration of national values has led to the success of Weibo. With the affection by western culture, Chinese are becoming increasingly emphasis on liberalism. Freedom has been highly valued in every aspects of life, especially freedom of speech. In the past, only the people with strong power can make their voices heard and it is unable for the public to talk about the government. But Weibo changed this situation by giving the discourse power to common people. In this site, everyone can speak out his/her opinions on trending news and more people can read those ideas with the function of forward.
Also, people can become ‘we media’ to spread out the news around them, which is known by few people but of importance on the society. 4. 3 Subculture Subculture is the same culture shared barely by a small group in a nation/society. It is largely influenced by the personalities of members in that group. In this level, the characteristics of new netizen generation could explain the widespread usage of Weibo. Weibo has designed its website tailoring to characteristics in this subculture. According to the Enfodesk report, customers aged from 20~34 accounted for 76. 52 percent for the Weibo users.
It means that major customers of Weibo are born in 1980s and 1990s, which is a new generation in China after the “only one child” policy. There are there typical elements affecting this culture group. 4. 3. 1 Family In oriental culture, like in China, people put more emphasis on relationships with other. And family is the most important relation that plays a vital role in the formation of personalities. And Child tend to be more self conscious in small families than large families. In China, the structure of family experienced huge changes after the ‘one child’ policy.
The ‘China Population Statistics Yearbook 2000’stated that the family size gradually reduced in scale since the policy and the average number of each family dropped from 4. 51 in 1982 to 3. 58 in 1999. Having only child in their family among the generation of 80s and 90s, parents putted all attention and family resources on their child, which lead to a certain degree of doting on that child. As a result, the new generation is more self-centered, revealing a era of self. And, people in this group wanted to be different from their parents’ generation and tend to more emphasis on the self expression.
The customization feature of Weibo satisfies this value by provide a stage for people to show themselves. Individual can differentiate with others by showing own ideas towards fashion and current affairs, display his/her interests and create personalize profile. 4. 3. 2 Language Special language is other component to form the subculture. In culture among the generation of 80s and 90s, people usually use the internet catchword in their daily conversation. This words can be defined as a peculiar way of saying something which has become established after long use in netizens.
Because of their simplification and humorous, many youth use these special phrases in their feeds in social networking sites. As a result, more users know these catchphrases and spread them out to create even larger influence. Moreover, people need to frequently surf the internet to keep up with the newest famous words because of its time-sensitive. For Weibo, it provide a free place to enhance the popularity of pop words online and vice verse the pop words would attract more users for Weibo. According to Baidao website, Weibo fueled the prevalence of Internet catchwords in 2011. 5 Conclusion
In brief, this essay has discussed three consumer behavior theories, that are the means-end chain, the power of reference group and the three levels of subjective cultures, to explain the success of Weibo. Firstly, Weibo clearly created its major features catering to the desired values of its target customers. With functions of information, communication and entertainment,this site enables people to build self image, get friends’ up-to-date information, enhance social network and have a recreation. Consequently, consumers can fulfill their values of self expression, sense of belonging, entertainment life and self-esteem.
Then, this site have used the reference power of celebrities and friends to attract more users along its development. By firstly encouraging important people to open accounts, Weibo induced thousands of their fans. Similarly, these early users influence their friends to use this service. Finally, supranational culture, national culture and subculture lays a foundation to the achievement of Weibo. The widespread presence of social networking sites could be used to indicate the success of Weibo. And the Chinese national culture and youth culture have speeded up the popularity of Weibo.
Though Weibo is successful in certain degree, there are still some measures which could be taken to enhance its publicity. On one hand, Weibo should provide a internal version for foreigners. Only using Chinese as the instructional language is big problem that leads to the limitation of global users. The fact is that there are increasing number of foreign users who access the website in recent time, such as Boris Johnson–the mayor of London, David Mitchell–the author of Cloud Atlas. However, they can not use the website efficiently because they are not familiar with Chinese language.
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