A Study Of Marketing Strategies Of Wechat Entering The Us Market

As the most popular social information network in China, We Chat is actively carrying out the global expansion. On February 25 th, 2013, Tencent announced to establish a data center in the US showing that We Chat officially starts to expand the US market. Nevertheless, it is of great difficulty to merely copy the successful path of We Chat in China to the US market due to the cultural barriers. Therefore, it is significant to study We Chat entering the US market from the intercultural perspective.To dig into the reason why We Chat faces great challenges in the US market, the thesis studies both the marketing strategies that We Chat applied into the US market and the characteristics of Chinese culture reflected in We Chat. Then it makes a further analysis on examining the American culture and its characteristics, in order to find out how Chinese culture conflicts with American culture, and leads to the unsatisfying results in entering the US market. Based on Hofstede-Bond’s(1980) cultural dimensions theory, the thesis has a close probe into the cultural parameters that influence the performance of We Chat in Sino-American market respectively. As they have a closest link with the present topic, three cultural dimensions — collectivism vs individualism, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation, are selected to constitute the theoretical framework of the thesis, attempting to figure out how these cultural factors work during We Chat developing its markets in China and the US respectively. Through both quantitative and qualitative analysis, the thesis is intended to provide some helpful suggestions for We Chat and other business organizations when they develop the new markets abroad. Finally, by a tentative comparison between Facebook and We Chat, the thesis also wishes that businesses which plan to enter the overseas markets can learn something useful from the two enterprises, minimize their risks and losses, and go smoothly.