Keywords

1 Introduction

The sharing economy is China’s national development framework that has been consistently promoted and devoted to advancement by both the government and private sectors in recent years. The focus on new media development supported by the Chinese government is demonstrated by China’s Premier Li Keqiang. He put forward the idea of Internet Plus (Internet+) and proclaimed it the national strategy [1]. In particular, new media has played a crucial factor in mediating “sharing methods.” On this basis, China’s e-commerce became derived value by the trend of the ongoing invention of new media. In China, e-commerce has been rapidly thriving into massive B2C and B2B electronic platforms for at least a decade, like Taobao and Jingdong. The most noticeable and world-renowned is so-called the Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba. In spite of a certain downward trend of China’s e-commerce revenue in the period of Singles Day Festival in the recent two years so that most people hold negative attitudes toward the prospect of e-commerce [2], another kind of new retail e-commerce that depends on social media is emerging in time. Drawing this concept, the Chinese entrepreneurs are seeking greater opportunities to combine B2C and B2B to develop a new integrative business model ushering in a new commercial age. This kind of new media circular symbiosis seems to better reflect the core of the sharing economy.

Aforesaid, the concept of the new retail commercial model is established upon the infrastructure of social media. The largest Chinese social media, WeChat, has been developed with the highlight of IT advancement into multiple platforms. WeChat appeared in the 2010s; since then, it had been a primary online platform for connecting friends like Facebook in the Chinese community. In the recent decade, it has developed into a specific network that possesses integrative media circulation function in Chinese people’s daily life. According to the latest data report, users of WeChat have reached up to the number of 1.098 billion, and its Daily Active User is 902 million (DAU) [3]. Significantly, the total number of friends in the WeChat user’s communication list is accelerating to 110% in 2018 relative to 2015. It signifies that a huge social network of acquaintances is gradually interwoven into a shape. With the recent advancement, WeChat is able to be utilized to manage nearly every level of a resident’s daily need, including food, clothing, residence, and transportation. According to Baidu, now WeChat performs as a multi-functional application combining the purposes of messaging, social media, and mobile payment with more than 90 percent of national-wide smartphone usage. In particular, entertainment and personal social relations have become the most important use purposes for making WeChat’s popularity.

Just at the time of WeChat’s booming, the WeChat IT developer invented mini-programs embedded in WeChat, called applets. Despite it is a very newborn application launched by Tencent in early 2017, as of March 2018, the number of WeChat applet users has exceeded 400 million [4]. The main feature of applets is that they can be used on the WeChat platform without extra download and installation. Its function acts similar to conventional applications, opened to be used mainly by enterprises, governments, media, other organizations, or any other sectors. Particularly, Chinese entrepreneurs start to be the primary developers to design their own purchase mechanism as virtual stores. The preference for developing WeChat applets for Chinese entrepreneurs is for the huge number of already-owned WeChat users. The purpose of this research is to assess the impact of digitalized social media on commercial models in society through exploring even more delicate features of Web 3.0 that suffice to stimulate a new era of IoT. It is important to note that WeChat, as the largest Chinese social media with advanced IT infrastructure, has new media’s symbolic power to centralize most sources of the social and technology and to integrate most potential customers for its industry partners. New retail drawing on digitalized social media now seemingly owns the authority of extending its new media strategies to intervene in the Chinese e-commerce market.

In effect, the impact of new media and its growing IT development on society has been discussed by academics on a cross-disciplinary basis. Academics maintain that technology-artifact-centric contributions to social impact now stand in an outstanding position in nearly every aspect of society. This point of view is especially evident in China. China has largely invested in and endeavored to IT infrastructures and the Internet, attempting to initiate a technological-netted society. It is peculiarly obvious in the widespread use of various applications for mobile payment, and the rare use of paper money in the country. William Lehr, David Clark, Steve Bauer, Arthur Berger, and Philipp Richter propose that with the development of digitalization in new media, the Internet engenders a layered structure, public network platforms, and application platforms. Moreover, based on the appearance of the role of “users,” the Internet seemingly performs as the third-party platform, allowing extensive innovation with openness and effectiveness. Accompanied by innovation-driven attributes, William Lehr et al. [5] pinpoint that the Internet is meanwhile empowered with the abstract functions brought by digitalization in new media. He upholds that social “meanings” can be distilled from the abstraction of the new media. Using this concept to look at the mini-programs built- in WeChat, it is open to diverse developers to design so as to fit in different functions. The mini-programs apparently give out space, networking, and possibilities for innovation.

In addition, the applet development parallels the conventional deep-link within the Internet mechanism. Daft and Lengel [6] were the first to propose the concept of Media Richness Theory, arguing that the correctness and richness of information communication are determined by the advancement of media functions. In terms of the functions of the digital new media, portability, deep-link, and 5G technologies enable digital new media to aggregate hyper-text and then build an information society. Applets, like the deep-link in WeChat, have the privilege of holding the WeChat users’ habits, preference, and need. On this basis, a business owner can actively offer selected choices for the customers to pick up, which is to filter excess information and provide a better-consuming experience by saving time for potential customers. This accents the richness of applets.

The advent of applets just happened recently, and just a few academic articles discuss its features of interactivity, entertainment, and extensive service [7,8,9]. Scholars also indicate that distinct from Western Internet companies (e.g., Google and Facebook), WeChat was initially fashioned as “platformization and then to the infrastructuralization of its platform model” [10]. This insight well explains the unlimited advancement of WeChat as the typical digitalized social media. Therefore, applets are essentially the extended platforms within the main platform that is hence able to reach out to ordinary people in every aspect of daily life with more ease. Based on it, the emergence of applets has caused a hit of the media news release and public debate, discussing the popularity in various aspects. Interestingly, the powerful function through the small application has been recently demonstrated in entertainment, such as the box office performance of The Avengers 4 and a large number of WeChat Mini Program users for the mobile game mini-programs [11].

This article explores the commercial trend of new retail operated upon digitalized social media which is now capable of providing e-commerce with an interface allowing consumers to “step into” the store. In the wake of new media development, the business store does not refer to either a virtual or physical store but both. Especially, customers are expected to firstly visit the virtual store and then the physical. This article aims to reveal the symbolic function of the digital platform that has been improved in the wake of the IT advancement of Web 3.0. In particular, the notion of deep-link appropriated to connect to portability has been expanded in its digital function.

Deriving the huge number of existing users from the most powerful Chinese social media, applets have been developed into a new style of the virtual store, providing the customers with a symbolic entrance to the new retail plus networking e-commerce. Nevertheless, the study concludes that the value of the entrance is not embodied with NetFlow as merely collecting IP network traffic. It indeed acts as an interface that at- tracts the customers to step into the virtual store and imperceptibly accustom them- selves to the new consumption behavior.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 A Case Study with Observation and in-Depth Expert Interviews

This study adopts a case study employing technical documentation analysis, business reports, as well as observations and interviews. Expert Interviews is the key methodology for qualitative data generation. The sample for the case study is a Chinese technology company that the techno-features have been utilized to develop diverse models of business and marketing hi-tech ideas and materials. The research has found that the company operates online-and-offline experiencing cosmetic selling through the medium of WeChat applets.

Beautiful Imagination is created as brand-new cosmetics made in China using WeChat applets as its commencement for new retail business. The cosmetic products have been grouping into a variety of categories and displayed based on the customer- oriented-designed interface. The target customers are the emerging office-working class among younger generations who tend to pursue fashioned outlook and price- friendly products. This commercial model is based on a digitalized logic and manipulating social media platform. More clearly, it is a trial for new retail established upon portable social media. The crucial instrument is seemingly WeChat, the largest social media application in China. However, the deep-link behind Web 3.0 becomes the key. Beautiful Imagination is operated by Guangzhou Dizan Info Technology Co., Ltd., an essentially technology software company that is using its Internet technology to develop new social e-commerce innovation models as an experimental example. This example can further provide a reference value for the enterprise side, allowing it to not only open up the consumer market but also to carry into practice for linking the industry chain within e-commerce. The innovation models also represent the Chinese enterprise’s ambition to reshape the marketplace into a complex of B2C, B2B, and C2C by using high technology and new media.

2.2 Interview Design

The interview conducted in this research is in-depth interviews using face-to-face and semi-structured interviewing methods. The interview was conducted for two formal occasions and one informal talk. The CEO of Guangzhou Dizan Info Technology Co., Ltd., Johnson Zhang, is the key interviewee. For the research purpose, the three propositions are proposed to outline three dimensions that are involved in the association for this study so as to be used to develop questionnaires for the semi-structured interview. Propositions are constructed to logically display the core questionnaires of this research. The foregoing discussion indicates three dimensions involved in the association for this study, such as applets, WeChat, and new retail (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
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Three dimensions of the study (conceptualized pattern by the author)

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Based on the dimensions, the propositions are developed into the following: (1) Applets provide an essential portable device for both sides of consumers and business runners, and this feature is particularly beneficial to the side of business runners. (2) The function of new media is taken to create a new consumption experience. (3) In the wake of shifting commercial models, the regulation of customer management maintains conventional importance but steps into a new solution. Questionnaires for the semi-structured interview includes the following: (1) Applets seem a subordinate program accompanied by WeChat. How does it play a key role in enhancing new retail highlights? (2) Applets function as other digital applications. Would it become an alternative option for customers to apply in their consumption? (3) A new retail model for the Chinese marketplace now appears a trend that cannot be halted. Will conventional customer management turn into an uncontrolled challenge to handle?

The interview revolves around the discussion of the proposed questions, dismissing questions that offered only “yes-no-maybe” answers. According to Rapley, the in-depth interview engrosses “a style of interviewing that encourages interviewees to produce ‘thick description’… by questions and other verbal… methods, to produce elaborated and detailed answers” [12]. In addition, Atkinson and Silverman (cited in Rapley, [12]) indicate that the face-to-face interview is “presented as enabling a ‘special insight’ into subjectivity, voice and lived experience.” The in-depth interview, using a face-to-face method, was very useful to this study because it provided practical insights into how the Chinese enterprise establishes “smart stores” as a credible brand for the new retail e-commercial model. The questions proposed in the interview are semi-structured in style. According to Minichiello, Aroni, Timewell, and Alexander (1995), the design of the semi-structured questions requires researchers to use the relatively broader topic in which they are able to guide the interview. Additionally, the semi-structured mode of asking follows the unstructured, unfixed interview process [13]. Moreover, the semi-structured interview allows the interviewer to ask questions more flexibly. For instance, when the interviewee explains any ideas during the conversation, the interviewer can be reflexive and ask deeper questions at any time.

This research studies a wide range of issues from the development of digitalized social media in China to the specific elements of a new business model; particularly, this study aims to provide a conceptual framework for future research. Therefore, the semi-structured interview allowed the questions the researchers proposed to be flexible and adjusted according to the interviewee’s response. The interview conducted for this research also adopted the approach of the expert interviewer as part of the study. According to Bogner, Littig, and Menz, the expert interview is used to providing a shortcut for entering the enormous context with uncertain development to acquire useful results quickly [14]. In other words, this specific type of interview allows a researcher to collect data efficiently from the professionals in the industry. Bogner et al. suggest that conducting expert interviews can serve to shorten time-consuming data gathering processes, particularly if the experts are seen as “crystallization point” for practical insider knowledge and are interviewed as surrogates for a wider circle of players.

As a leading IT developing industry in China, Johnson Zhang provided the most relevant and crucial information that brought specific insights into the direction of this research. His insights saved the researcher much time in selecting useful materials for this study. Summarizing, the combination of various research methods was conducive to producing findings related to the research questions of this study. The systematic procedures and logical sequence of the research process aimed to examine the new media’s symbolic value at both the macro- and micro-levels in e-commerce ecology.

3 Results

3.1 The Case Study Shows Two-Aspect Significant Perspectives

One is that new retailers attempt to develop an innovative business model deriving from the main features of digitalized social media. The other is the new retailers particularly heighten “consumption experience,” which can be established by using multiple effects of IT infrastructure advancement. WeChat applets act as a significant interface. A concise and precise description of the investigated results is drawn with the help of conceptual patterns (Figs. 2 and 3).

Fig. 2
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Extended functions of WeChat applets (conceptualized pattern by the author)

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Fig. 3
figure 3

Online-and-offline store (conceptualized pattern by the author and Beautiful Imagination)

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Based on the features of digitalized social media, the new commercial mode is able to develop new retail by (1) customized digital platform, which functions in scoping personal preference; (2) deep-link IT development flexibility that can be modeling industrial chain; (3) instant-feedback portability that is to grasp customer dynamics for immediate service; and (4) upgraded social media, which provides multiplying functions to an unlimited smart extent. The interviewee Johnson Zhang indicates that “WeChat has very strong infrastructure by which we can leap upon the base of the existing market” (October 2019; July 2020, translated by the author). Zhang further maintains that digitalized social media has great potential of changing customers’ consumption behavior due to gradual dependence on media technology.

As to WeChat’s IT infrastructure advancement, the research has found that its multiple effects can be used in new retail, including (1) acting as entrance that refers to WeChat applets performing as the symbolic entrance for customers; (2) connecting function that is to promptly connect customers behind the deep-link of the digital platform; (3) sharing features that the business side utilizes to build customer relationship with trust and fondness; (4) agile transaction that stimulates purchase in quantity based on networking; (5) releasing that refers to customers’ endorsement for the consumption experience; and (6) specific experiencing with which customers are able to obtain online and offline product-testing. Zhang reinforces that “the function of WeChat’s IT infrastructure advancement has to be explored by retailers who are able to develop more of technological programs to enhance the whole capability of the platform” (October 2019; July 2020, translated by the author).

3.2 Interpretation

Based on Fig. 2, the existing marketplace tends to flow into the new media domain, and now the Chinese enterprise intends to draw it onto the WeChat platform, which has a healthy foundation in terms of “already-there” users and digital payment system. Applets become the vital interface, undoubtedly acting as the symbolic entrance for the market transferring. Moreover, described as one of the world’s most powerful applications by Forbes [15], WeChat is known as China’s social media for everything and a super application because of its wide range of functions and platforms. WeChat attaching a large number of friends’ circles associates the population into “big lumps” for the Chinese entrepreneurs to re-shape the business landscape. Furthermore, the capability of WeChat is to construct an overall daily consumption network on the basis of the social circle at the horizontal and vertical levels. This actually moves toward the substantive implementation of the Internet+ promoted by the Chinese government.

Figure 3 explains the ambition of the Chinese enterprise to create an innovative business model, transferring the efforts in exploring customers into developing more consumption experiences for customers. Since applets are the exemplar, invented as mini-programs embedded in WeChat, they are expected to supply the existed low-cost, Internet-platform marketplace to Chinese entrepreneurs with a huge number of already-owned users. Drawing on the applets, the Chinese entrepreneurs, thereby, are able to build their own exclusive online business. The advent of these mini-programs serving as virtual stores essentially epitomizes the new consumption model in this era. Because of the accelerated growth of information sources, marketing reach and channels, it is indicated that e-commerce is progressing into more complex, fragmented, and varied prospects [16]. Nevertheless, applets, like the deep-link in WeChat, have the privilege of holding the customers’ habits, preference, and need. On this basis, a business owner can actively offer selected choices for the customers to pick up, which is to filter excess information and provide a better-consuming experience by saving time for the custom ers.

4 Discussion

In response to the research propositions, the findings of this study and their implications should be relooked in the broader context. This research analyzes the specific role of digitalized social media service, focusing on the invention of applets. Now, it is discussed how this emerging techno-commercial platform could trigger a successful new retail plus networking e-commerce model in the future.

In order to improve its customer service, the IT infrastructure renders mobile e-commerce runners to connect all relative industries to provide their customers with ample service, including suppliers, freight forwarders, payment service providers, and referencing advertisers. Upon the mobile e-commerce platform, all services can be customer-designed and source-interexchange. This is as if an active e-marketplace opens to all who desire to participate. However, the Chinese enterprise thinks the current medium for business marketing still states in passive communication, but what the business runners desire is their proactive power to “drag in” customers. Therefore, business runners are digging out various “entrance” to connect to potential customers. Once it happens, the transaction possibilities visit.

Apparently, applets as the built-in program in WeChat become the role of the desirable entrance, allowing the new retailers to omit the customer-hunting concern from business and be able to devote to deepening customer relationships. In particular, through the WeChat mechanism, the business runners grasp the customers’ preferences, tastes, habits, and lifestyles; they can adopt active action to serve their customers with an active attitude—inquiring if the customers “want” the goods they have already selected for them. This symbolic interaction is indeed built based on the new consumption model and for the purpose of maintaining long-term customer relationships. This new consumption model has thus been deemed a new 4.0 business operation of beauty consumption via social e-commerce.

The ambition of the Chinese cosmetics entrepreneurs to achieve the new consumption model also explains that in this utter media-related era, social media has mediated people’s lifestyles, and its friends’ circles become the vital reference framework for customers. This situation illustrates the theory of media-system dependency. The theory maintains that once society becomes more complicated and media bears multiple functions, people would be even more dependent on media [17]. When we all step into the era of new media, it means we are confronting a more complex and various world than ever. The appearance of social media simplifies the difficulties of our daily choices because we obtain most knowledge and common sense through our reference framework—the friend circle. Therefore, the new e-commerce extended from social media signifies the possibilities of future business models differentiating from before.

5 Conclusions

In following with prosperity of a rapidly thriving E-commerce with massive-scale B2C and B2B electronic platforms in China, the Chinese entrepreneurs are now seeking greater opportunities to combine B2C and B2B to develop a new integrative business model ushering in a brand-new consuming ecology. In the wake of Web3.0, it has embodied participatory communication, which brings forth users’ access to the media with ease. Customer behavior has been the core of business research and practice; however, it has had a rapid change with the emergence of new media, also accompanied by the new consumption model and customer habits. In particular, as the second biggest economic market in the world, China forms its own particular consumption model, in which new media plays a critical role.

It is found that the up-to-the-minute application, “applets,” is invented to embed in WeChat. Deriving the huge number of existing users from the most powerful Chinese social media, applets have been developed into a new style of the virtual store, providing the customers with a symbolic entrance to the new retail plus networking e-commerce. Nevertheless, the study concludes that the value of the entrance is not embodied with NetFlow as merely collecting IP network traffic. It indeed acts as an interface that attracts the customers to step into the virtual store and imperceptibly accustom themselves to the new consumption behavior. Therefore, this article concludes this new business model deriving WeChat’s great quantity of 800-million users changes the original customer relationship management into a new style that possesses the timely-oriented and active customer-maintaining features.

Worthy of notice is that portable consumer-centric service behind the deep-link and many-to-many customer management enabled by digitalized social media represents IT technology breaking down traditional consumption and restructuring consumers in new and invisible ways. In particular, an innovation of the mobile Internet and interactive technology, integrating cloud computing, big data, and social media applications will provide a future experience of specialized smart scenes. This would be the future observation.