Consumer Shopping
12 September 2018
By Alex Harrington
Debenhams and House of Fraser are just examples of how retail stores have been at the forefront of national high street worry (BBC NEWS, 2018). Consumer culture is changing and brands, including department stores, should keep ahead of user trends to prevent company collapse.
Also, we are in a new global age of ever pressing demands. An example of such a demand on everyday life is shown through the customer service of Japanese transport. If one carriage is more than three seconds late for departure, Japanese rail companies would have to broadcast an apology. Everyone wants everything now but somehow many still wait nine months for the natural process of having a baby?
Although we cannot prevent the inevitability of physical shop closure, we can keep brands rich in customer history from closing. Combining retail and demand together, the answer for profit is simple. Technology through social media.
Many here in the UK see Instagram as the pioneering social network platform to use the power of ecommerce within a digital news feed this year. However, what you might not know is that, it was the large Chinese social network giant, WeChat, who implemented this in 2013 (Millward, 2013).
To summarise lightly, WeChat is the Chinese version and combination of all western smartphone apps together such as WhatsApp, Amazon app, Uber and your bank account app. Since WeChat became multifunctional and multi-disciplinary it is, even today, the most used app in mainland China.
WeChat's ergonomic app interface makes all users access their wallet through their profile with ease (figure 1). This subsection of WeChat entitled ‘WeChat Pay’ entitles all Chinese bank users to link their bank details with the application and make any purchase from online to physical chain stores, local restaurants and even carry out peer-to-peer transactions (figure 2).
Figure 1: Graziani, T. (2017)
Figure 2: Graziani, T. (2017)
Although subject to censorship and political cases, WeChat may have started the digital revolution of high street shopping for many British and smaller brands. In a contemporary society ever moving towards celebrating diversity, difference and personal touches, ecommerce via social media gives opportunity to cater for individual tastes and consequently increase revenue. Such an example is the use of the British Savile Row tailor, Henry Poole, gaining a WeChat presence (Channel 4, 2016). Although sponsorship through high profile athletes and famous lifestyle bloggers will always be a strong marketing tool for attracting the masses, let’s see how another dimension of digital marketing will change the way you and I prefer to shop in years to come.
References:
BBC NEWS. (2018) Debenhams – Market Data. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cny6mx8e2q6t/debenhams (Accessed: 10 September 2018).
Channel 4. (2016) Britain’s Billionaire Immigrants. https://www.channel4.com/programmes/britains-billionaire-immigrants/on-demand/62222-001 (Accessed: 23 August 2018).
Graziani, T. (2017) How to set up WeChat Pay? A Simple Guide. https://walkthechat.com/wechat-payment-5-reasons-tencent-might-kill-alipay/ (Accessed: 12 September 2018).
Millward, S. (2013) Tech In Asia – WeChat v5.0 Update Arrives on iOS With Social Gaming, Mobile Payments, and Sticker Store. https://www.techinasia.com/wechat-v5-update-adds-social-gaming-mobile-payments-and-sticker-shop (Accessed: 10 September 2018).
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