Question

Chinese consumers are increasingly being influenced by video bloggers, columnists, and photobloggers on social media platforms including Instagram, WeChat and Weibo. Becky Li, with more than 7.5 million combined followers on WeChat and Weibo, is one of China’s top fashion bloggers in China. She is regarded as one of China’s influencers in the fashion world and offers good content of shopping and experience advice. Another well-respected Chinese fashion blogger Zhang Dayi has her own clothing and beauty brand which she sells on the Alibaba Group’s Taobao e-commerce platform. Zhang Dayi allows customers to post reviews of the fashion items it sells and customers can add each other as friends, share wish list items, and recommend products to each other. In this situation, consumers form a structured set of relationships involving a particular brand online – for Zhang Dayi’s online brand. These fashion influencers have become very successful because they help Chinese consumers to choose style for self-expression Adapted from source: https://www.scmp.com

Questions: a) Name and explain the source of social influence used to describe Becky Li and Zhang Dayi. Describe the characteristics of your identified source of social influence.

b) Give TWO reasons why the source of social influence identified in (a) can bring influences on consumers. Illustrate EACH reason with ONE supporting reference from the case.

c) Name the source of social influence used in the above case of which “consumers form a structured set of relationships involving a particular brand online – for Zhang Dayi’s online brand”. Discuss the characteristics of your identified source of social influence.

Answer 1

Answer a) Sources of social influence mention here are :

• Instagram : a social app which help you to connect with your friends and family also with the world too and exchange pictures , vedieos, chatting can be done ,etc.
• WeChat : a social app used for chatting , vedio call , also support photo,text message, etc.
• Weibo : a social networking tool just like Twitter in India .Word weibo means microblogging used to tweet.
• Alibab group : a chinese e-commerce platform used in china capturing commercial sales. It captures more than half share of market.

These are the source of social influence mention by Becky Li and Zhang Dayi.

My identified source of social influence are :

• Instagram : same as mentioned above.
• Facebook : a social site used to interect with friends , we can chat exchange our views , pictures , vedio calls, conference calls , group chats , etc.
• Twitter : a networking tool used to tweet and be in contact with each other and we can also follow our idols there.

Answer b) TWO main reasons why the source of social influence identified are :

1. Acceptance of majority : one main reason is acceptance of majority or you can say group thinking encourage cooperation with the influencer.

For example, in the case of Becky Li mentioned in question , she is a fashion blogger with 7.5 million combined followers which means whole group is with acceptance of taste which she had.

2.Influence : the other reason is the influence of one person on others due to one's personality, work , passion and respect towards them.

As mentioned in the given case Bencky was followed for her fashion blog and good content of shopping and experience advice.

Answer c) In the question Zhang Dayi has her own brand influencing people and also they can connect to her directly or indirectly by the other followers sharing there links with them . This king of bridging is used in online shopping portals as mentioned she uses Alibaba group which is one of the biggest e-commerce platform bringing traffic for there site with there goodwill which helps Zhang to capture for her brand also she herself sharing her beauty products which increases hr demand.

My identified source in case of Zhang is online portals i can contact to sell my products that can be like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, etc.

Here i can my owned product where i can get traffic basically means customer created through my personal links as well as customers attracted by the registered portals and websites.