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1. The Big Picture - Social Commerce In China

 

**Social commerce we refer to here is commercial activities that evolve within a circle of influence; brands socialise with their customers daily, typically in a group chat. And people socialise with each other in this brand-hosted online space.  

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The booming of digitisation and e-commerce has given birth to many socially specified digital marketing strategies. 

The activity of shopping in China does not end with the transaction; shopping becomes a way for people to socialise with each other, and the brand's role is to enable consumers to socialise and bond with each other and share their common interests built through their common interest of the product and services.

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2. What is Private Traffic Marketing, and Why is it Popular in China?

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With the booming live-streaming shopping, private traffic marketing has been among Chinese brands' most popular and commonly used tactics in the past few years.  The strategy relies heavily on directly socialising with customers throughout the purchase process. Hence, brands in China rely on connecting their customers via personal social communication platforms, for example— WeChat, Weibo, Mini programs, and RED, to extend their product and service offerings. 

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In return, customers have exclusive access to loyalty programs and discounts through these private channels. Brands carry on small talks with customers when they are in between purchases; simultaneously, customers have experienced a more personal care experience with these brands.

 

Most importantly, at this point, the brand acts as a source of trust for consumers to depend on in their purchase decision-making process. 

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3. A China-Specific Marketing Strategy or a Transferable Strategy to Other Markets? 

 

3.1 Barriers to adopting it in the Japanese market

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3.11. Communication style

What's working for Chinese consumers?

• Our research shows that people in top-tier cities in China would be okay with receiving messages from an official commercial source on their private communication platforms like WeChat and Weibo. The 'special attention' from the brands gives people a sense of belonging and a sense of extended care beyond transactions. 

May not for Japan

• Consumers generally consider any personal contact from brands as trying to sell products; nothing is gained from consumers' perspectives but paying for something they might not want/need later. 

 

3.12. Mode of Communication 

What's working for Chinese consumers?

• No one is actively using emails anymore in China; email marketing is outdated and less effective in today's Chinese digital context. People want the interaction with brands to be personalised and real-time responses.

May not for Japan 

• Email marketing and brochures are still the main ways of communication with brands employed in Japan. Brands to have direct personal messages to their customers are considered an invasion of personal privacy in most overseas markets.

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3.13. Working Hours

What's working for Chinese consumers?

• Retail staff in China have different performance expectations from other markets. Chinese retail teams are expected to reply to consumer messages, even if it's outside their working hours, to provide immediate assistance.

May not for Japan

• In most Western countries/cultures, employees prefer to have work and work-life balance, And Japan is no exception on this front; retail staff would not like to respond to "personal messages" 24/7.

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3.14. Different Digital Eco-system 

What's working for Chinese consumers?

• Everything social - People form social groups on e-commerce websites like T-mall and JD. WeChat private groups and mini-programs are built within the China-specific social platforms, and the channel does not require extra effort for onboarding for commerce.     

May not for Japan

• As for the Japanese market, social communication tools must be equipped for commercial uses, with similar mini programme plug-ins, limited live-streaming experience, and limited social selling platforms.  Communication tools like Line and WhatsApp, until this day, have only started developing group communication features and commerce platforms, dipping toes into the social commerce space. In China, the digital ecosystem has matured in this aspect.

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4. What Could Be Adopted for the Japanese Market? 

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4.1 Social Commerce Concepts for Japan

Brands building online community spaces for people to "hang out" is a new concept for the client. For a relatively consciously isolated society, buying decisions are personal.

 

However, finding belongings through interest sharing is universal and transferrable. ​

What's applicable in the Japanese market is leveraging digital platforms to gather for shared purposes.

We take the whisky podcast as an example.  ​---- The brand engages with whisky "experts" to host a live podcast; before the podcast, anyone registering for the show would receive a sample pack with a range of whisky and a whisky encyclopaedia​. When the podcast goes live, people can immerse themselves in a shared online tasting session and learn about whisky as they go. After the live podcast, the whisky group chat stays alive to exchange thoughts and experiences, interact with hosts, etc. And the brand grows its customer base from there. 

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How To Connect? 
​We categorised the findings by the motivation to connect and effectiveness.  

From the Whisky case

It is about hosting interest-sharing activities, showing the customers the brand's understanding of the customer, and showing them the brand recognises why this particular customer decided to interact with the brand and buy from it.  

The brand is to deliver the service that shows the customer they know who they are as a person, not just a membership number. And know their product-using habits and personal preferences. Recommend the products/the usage accordingly. (All customer data could be collected through the private group chats. This part can be analysed by machine learning/AI tools, but the interaction with consumers stays in real humans' hands. )

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Digital Ear Dropping or Real Connections? 

 

The key difference between analytic tools that collect social media information and private domain operations is the real humane connection behind it. The private chat groups are operated by human beings rather than AI bots. This type of interaction gives the customer a sense of being cared for. 

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How To Maintain the Connections?  

The key takeaway of operating social groups and doing social commerce is to have a high presence in customers' decision-making process. When consumers interact with you and hear from you as a trusted source, they will naturally think of you first when the purchase intention happens. For brands operating in their local Japanese markets, we recognised that keeping the boundary and respecting privacy still comes before extending the service to personalised connections.  However, updating the client's marketing tactics away from e-newsletters and traditional TV commercials was an excellent opportunity.  There are ways to socialise with customers on social platforms with minimum costs, broader influences and a more significant customer base to gain for the CRM database. 

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Reflection:

Explaining cultural nuances to clients is challenging work. For example, why would Chinese consumers like to "hang out" with brands?  Culturally, there is the influence of collectivism; people are more comfortable deciding on a group setting, following the authority's lead, and brands are now playing this role in the groups.

It came later to me that anyone who has not been living in Chinese society would only grasp the cultural nuances slowly. We were overgeneralising the expectations of cultural understanding under one "Asian" domain. I expected the client to understand it without ambiguity.  In the business world, we talk a lot about effective communication and cross-cultural understanding; I think not until you experience it, it wouldn't make sense how some of the critical nuances could be easily missed and misinterpreted. The key to accurate cross-cultural communication is being sensitive enough to capture that lost in translation.