WeChat: a cross cultural study on how Millennials communicate and purchase online

Abstract

As European or American we are perhaps not familiar with Chinese mobile applications but, at the moment, Tencet with its WeChat app is playing an increasingly important role in the internet development. The most of WeChat users are aged between 18 and 30 years old and thus the most representative market segment is composed by Millennials. My d issertation tends to address the question of why an all-in-one application like WeChat wouldn’t work in the Western market. To do so, in the first part, I will compare the Chinese Millennials behavior, precisely the way they communicate and purchase on-line, with the Western Millennials behavior. In this way I will not only show which are the critical success factors in the Chinese market but also which may be the weaknesses of its use in the Western market. In the second part instead, in order to gain an in depth understanding of the dynamics underpinning how WeChat is used and perceived, interviews will be conducted with professionals belonging to Italian companies that operate in China through the use of WeChat.