1 INTRODUCTION / 1
1. 1 Motivation and the context of the investigation / 1
1. 2 Research questions and objectives / 2
1. 2. 1 Research questions / 2
1. 2. 2 Objectives / 4
1. 3 Structure of the book / 5
2 SELECTION OF RESEARCH OBJECTS / 7
2. 1 Selection of Chinese social media platforms / 7
2. 1. 1 Chinese social media's historical roots / 7
2. 1. 2 Main social media platforms in China / 8
2. 1. 3 The selected social media platforms in this research / 9
2. 2 Selection of research companies / 14
2. 2. 1 High reputation Western companies / 16
2. 2. 2 High reputation Chinese companies / 24
3 STATE OF THE ART AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK / 32
3. 1 Context of Chinese social media marketing / 35
3. 1. 1 Chinese digital consumers / 35
3. 1. 2 Usage of Chinese social media marketing / 38
3. 1. 3 Challenges / 41
3. 2 Characteristics of Sina Weibo and Sina Weibo marketing / 43
3. 2. 1 Characteristics of Sina Weibo / 44
3. 2. 2 Sina Weibo marketing / 45
3. 3 Characteristics of WeChat and WeChat marketing / 47
3. 3. 1 Characteristics of WeChat / 47
3. 3. 2 WeChat marketing / 49
3. 4 Related theoretical framework in the context of social media / 51
3. 4. 1 Evolution of consumption behavior model from AIDMA, AISAS to ISMAS/51
3. 4. 2 O2O models / 53
3. 4. 3 Electronic word?of?mouth (eWOM) / 54
3. 4. 4 Relationship marketing / 55
4 METHODOLOGY / 57
4. 1 Case study / 58
4. 1. 1 Definition of case study / 58
4. 1. 2 Design of case study / 59
4. 1. 3 Data collection, analysis, and interpretation in case study / 59
4. 1. 4 Procedure of case study / 61
4. 1. 5 Implementation of case study in this research / 62
4. 2 Expert analysis / 71
4. 2. 1 Grounded theory / 71
4. 2. 2 KPIs concept / 74
4. 2. 3 Information architecture / 84
4. 3 Content analysis / 87
4. 3. 1 Definition of content analysis / 87
4. 3. 2 Application fields of content analysis / 88
4. 3. 3 Implementation of content analysis in this research / 89
4. 4 Statistical method / 91
4. 4. 1 Descriptive statistical method / 91
4. 4. 2 Inferential statistical method / 91
4. 4. 3 Statistical analysis tool / 92
4. 4. 4 Implementation of statistical method in this research / 93
5 SINA WEIBO CASE STUDY AND RESULTS / 95
5. 1 Exploring social relationship among all companies / 95
5. 2 The history of usage of Sina Weibo from 2009 to 2014 / 101
5. 2. 1 The first usage of Sina Weibo / 101
5. 2. 2 Evolution of “No. of original posts vs. No. of retweets” for Western companies / 105
5. 2. 3 Evolution of “No. of original posts vs. No. of retweets” for Chinese companies / 117
5. 3 Establishment of the systematic measurement and classification framework/127
5. 3. 1 KPIs Data collection, processing & database creation / 128
5. 3. 2 Comparison of key indicators between companies / 149
5. 3. 3 Content features of top?one posts / 150
5. 3. 4 The results of cluster analysis / 155
6 WECHAT CASE STUDY AND RESULTS / 178
6. 1 Interface & menu analysis of WeChat official accounts / 182
6. 1. 1 Observation criteria and data collection / 184
6. 1. 2 Labeling process / 184
6. 1. 3 Database creation / 187
6. 1. 4 The results of interface & menu analysis / 194
6. 2 Analysis of push notification marketing / 209
6. 2. 1 KPIs data collection, processing & database creation / 209
6. 2. 2 The results of descriptive statistical analysis of key indicators / 217
6. 2. 3 The results of cluster analysis / 225
7 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS / 246
7. 1 Discussion / 246
7. 1. 1 Identification of the most successful representatives / 246
7. 1. 2 Exploration of key factor for social media success on both platforms / 251
7. 2 Conclusions / 259
7. 3 Innovation points / 266
7. 4 Further work / 267
References / 269