Degree Name
Master of Science
Graduate Program
Mass Communication and Media Arts
Advisor
Xie, Wenjing
Abstract
Modern social media have been being multi-functionalized. Some social media companies add more functions to their products in order to gratify more personal needs of their customers. Contrary to devoting to gratify users’ needs, some other media companies make smart marketing strategies, which aim to influence consumers’ behavior for motivating them to conduct financial transactions. However, marketing strategies are only effective in a certain period on a certain group of people. In contrast, gratifying users’ needs is always an effective way to obtain a large amount of users.
China’s WeChat, one currently dominant social messaging application in Chinese Mainland, as is such an multi-functionalized social medium that keeps adding more features for gratifying user needs in order to earn large usage, rather than applies marketing strategies to attract users. I conducted a survey and received 788 responses.
From the results, it can be seen that how important WeChat features are to users; why users chose to use WeChat more than other social media; and what other needs users want WeChat to gratify. The results point out that a large number of people choose to use a social medium frequently is because this social medium is capable to gratify a variety of their needs. Gratifying user needs is a more effective and everlasting way to earn more users and usage, rather than influencing user behavior through smart marketing strategies.