WeChat Brands : Communal Interaction and Brand Publicity in Chinese Social Media

Bai, Yuxin and Zhao, Xin and Cocker, Hayley Louise (2017) WeChat Brands : Communal Interaction and Brand Publicity in Chinese Social Media. In: North America - Advances in Consumer Research :. NA - Advances in Consumer Research . Association for Consumer Research, Duluth.

Abstract

Recent research on communal consumption has shifted its theoretical focus from a brand’s linking value in sustaining interaction to its publicity value of facilitating visibility. We examine brands on Chinese social media platform WeChat and report a hybrid form of sociality that conceptually lies between communal interaction and brand publicity.