Social, Economic, Technological and Marketing Impacts for Australian SMEs: A Review of WeChat

WeChat has developed from a social tool to a platform for connecting services and businesses. The wide application of WeChat platform has brought great impact to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This essay will analyse the social, economic, technological and marketing impacts for Australian SMEs.

Wechat promotes technological progress and plays good role in promoting the interconnection among people, equipment, and services (Che & Yang 2014). WeChat thoroughly implemented the innovation driven development strategy and actively laid out common technologies of intelligent hardware with the help of platform connectivity. Establish a pattern recognition centre to support the integration of cutting-edge technologies into products; Build a laboratory and strengthen the research of artificial intelligence. At present, more than 120 million Android terminals have been accessed (Che & Yang 2014). The WeChat hardware platform launched “WeChat hardware industry solutions” for eight industries such as air conditioning, toys, routers, home, television, recharge, health, and wear, connecting more than 3,000 hardware manufacturers and nearly 30 million devices activated (Wang, Yu & Library 2013).

WeChat provides SMEs with an online platform for marketing of goods and services. SMEs can efficiently create awareness of their products and increase online visibility. Connect the on-board system through the Tencent car union open platform to realize vehicle intelligent networking and share road traffic information (Wang, Yu & Library 2013). The government has the power to shape emerging innovative industries (Abrami Regina et al 2014). WeChat serves the harmonious development of society and improves the level of social governance. WeChat’s official account + enterprise WeChat + city services + small program to build an integrated online service platform, promote the construction of new smart city, assist the public service department to optimize the service process and innovate the service mode. Government WeChat promotes party and government organs at all levels to actively use mobile new media to release government information, focus on and fully disclose matters related to government services, shorten the processing time limit, and improve the level of information disclosure, public services, and social governance. Relying on the advantages of extensive coverage and accurate positioning of the mobile Internet, WeChat has accelerated its extension to small and medium-sized cities across the country in the fields of certificate handling, transportation, health care and overseas services, to promote the equalization of basic public services. In terms of transportation, WeChat connects real-time public transport information. Shenzhen traffic police WeChat handles traffic affairs, saving 1.33 million hours of inquiry and processing time for car owners (Gan 2017).

Australia’s agriculture benefits from the WeChat platform. If WeChat is deeply integrated with agriculture, the value chain of agricultural industry chain significantly expands. With the help of platform forces, we will break down rural information barriers by technical means, promote the entry of information into villages and households, improve farmers’ mobile phone application skills, accelerate the formation of an internally coordinated agricultural industrial layout suitable for the level of economic and social development and the carrying capacity of resources and environment, and promote the overall leap forward of the level of agricultural modernization. WeChat provides farmers with an active platform for online marketing of their farm products which promotes the quality of various agricultural goods, such as farm produce and animal products . WeChat provides safety for agricultural products through active communication between buyers and sellers. WeChat applies two-dimensional code and location identification,to cooperate with agricultural enterprises which facilitates traceability creating and anti-counterfeiting query, establish consumer confidence, create reliable purchase channels, and strengthen the interaction between enterprises and users. Wechat allows farmers create a catalogue of their products which attracts customers acting as a marketing tool. Buyers can buy farm products, such as cabbages, potatoes, and tomatoes form the comfort of their homes through wechat by online interactions with farmers or brokers.

WeChat and Alipay has positive impacts on small and medium-sized enterprises. Quite a few sellers who use Alipay are small and micro businesses or independent entrepreneurs. To help the smooth transformation of small and medium-sized logistics enterprises, Alipay allows small and medium-sized logistics companies upgrade POS hardware equipment and promote the improvement of China’s logistics ecological environment (Yong, Gui & Cheng 2017). In addition, the efficiency of capital transfer brought by Alipay, and the information of the whole data also provide a foundation for solving the financing problems of small and micro businesses. Since WeChat has more than 1 billion users, with most people using mobile phones, including the customer population of small and medium-sized enterprises, it enables companies reach more people creating awareness of their products. (Yong, Gui & Cheng 2017). New marketing methods and careers such as community marketing, we media, WeChat matrix, and private desire flow pool have emerged due to the growth of WeChat. For small and medium-sized enterprises, obtaining users through different WeChat marketing means and methods is the beginning of new opportunities for WeChat ecological enabling businesses to expand. Australian SMEs increase their purchase percentages made by consumers since WeChat improves their online visibility creating traffic to their various online platform, including websites, Instagram, and facebook. The social e-commerce model, community e-commerce model and new social retail model that have sprung up in the past two years are inseparable from the social attributes of WeChat(Yu & Cho 2019). Because enterprises want to build social, community and community e-commerce models, they need trading platforms and trading tools. Developing apps is feasible for large enterprises. However, for ordinary traditional enterprises, it is not only costly, but also too expensive to maintain. The most important thing is to innovate, promote and retain. Compared with small programs, which do not need to be downloaded and installed, they give users no experience.

Reference

Abrami Regina M., Kirby, William C., McFarlan, F. Warren 2014, ‘Why China Can’t Innovate? And What It’s Doing About It?’, Harvard Business Rev, pp. 107-111

Che, H. L., & Yang, C 2014, ‘Examining WeChat users’ motivations, trust, attitudes, and positive word-of-mouth: Evidence from China’, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 41, pp.104-111,

Wang, B. , Yu, D. , & Library, N. S 2013, ‘Study on the application of public platforms of wechat in chinese library services’. Library and Information Service.

Gan, C 2017, ‘Understanding wechat users’ liking behavior: an empirical study in china’. Computers in Human Behavior, 68, pp.30-39.

Yong, M. K. , Gui, X. , & Cheng, W 2017, ‘Special Digital Monies: The Design of Alipay and WeChat Wallet for Mobile Payment Practices in China’. IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction.

Yu, G. , Qiqi, & Cho, N 2019, ‘A study on the sustained use of mobile payment services: comparison of alipay and wechatpay in china’. Journal of Information Technology Applications & Management, pp. 26.