Developments in Online, Social Media Marketing in China and the West: An Overview of Different Approaches

Abstract

How has the online world changed over the last 5–12 years in China and in the West? Over the past 5–12 years, China has seen drastic changes to all aspects of life, businesses and as this study is focused on, social media and mobile payment systems. In 2006, just 10 per cent of China’s population were online and only one-third had a mobile phone. Turning to the present day, there are approximately 663 million smartphones in use across China ( Statista, 2018b ): an increase that shows no signs of slowing. When speaking to and interviewing Chinese students at Liaoning University, it was evident that mobile payment systems have existed and been in use for only 3–5 years. Despite this very minimal time scale, it is amazing to consider that by the end of 2018, total Chinese mobile payments will hit $5.87 trillion ( CBNEDITOR, 2018 ), a figure more than double the size of UK’s total GDP (at the time of writing)—it will be amazing to see, given the greatest gift of time, how the digital landscape of China will develop over the next decade—what a time to be alive!