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Social media
Chinese entrepreneurs’ marketing
experience of social media
marketing: perception, strategy
and challenge 365
Huan Chen Received 15 June 2019
Revised 12 December 2020
Department of Advertising, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA 16 May 2021
Accepted 1 September 2021
Dalong Ma
Department of Management, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley,
Colorado, USA, and
Ruowen Wang
Dell Technologies Inc, Beijing, China

Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to explore Chinese entrepreneurs’ perceptions and interpretations of social
media marketing (SMM) in their daily business practices.
Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative approach was adopted to explore the phenomenon.
Specifically, 18 in-depth interviews were conducted among Chinese entrepreneurs to obtain their experiences
of and perceptions on SMM.
Findings – Findings revealed that Chinese entrepreneurs have good understandings of SMM. They believe
SMM is a necessary way to interact with customers and SMM can provide flexibility and sensitivity which
are important for entrepreneurial marketing and are not easy to achieve through traditional marketing
activities. When they choose social media applications, they will match the purpose of marketing activity with
the characteristics of the social media. They have developed the specific strategies for different social media
applications. In the meantime, they are facing some challenges, such as breaking the communication clutter,
measuring the results and over depending on social media.
Originality/value – Findings of the current study extend the uses and gratifications theory to the context
of business-oriented media usage. In addition, findings of the study expand previous literature by enriching
the theoretical understanding of the concept of entrepreneur and entrepreneurial marketing in new social and
cultural contexts. Finally, findings of the current study also supplement previous research on social media
advertising by uncovering rich meanings of SMM from business owners’ emic perspective.
Keywords Social media marketing, Entrepreneurial marketing, Market orientation,
Uses and gratifications theory, Chinese entrepreneurs, Holistic qualitative research
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
After nearly four decades of market transition and development, Chinese businesses, such
as entrepreneurial firms, township and collective enterprises and transformed state-owned
enterprises, have emerged as one of the most important market segments and driving forces Journal of Research in Marketing
and Entrepreneurship
behind China’s rapid economic development (Yang and Li, 2008). Especially, Vol. 23 No. 2, 2021
pp. 365-386
entrepreneurship has generated significant economic growth and job creation in China © Emerald Publishing Limited
1471-5201
(Ahlstrom and Ding, 2014; Hansen, 2020). DOI 10.1108/JRME-06-2019-0055
JRME Entrepreneurs are people who identify, evaluate, and exploit opportunities and
23,2 entrepreneurship is a process of identification, evaluation and exploitation of opportunities
(Shane, 2012). According to recent reports (Wenderoth, 2019; Yang and Zhang, 2012),
Chinese new entrepreneurs tend to be younger and well-educated, who are at an average age
of 31 with nearly 44% in the 25 – 34 age group. Among them, four percent has master and
above education, 32% has bachelor education, 27% has community college or equivalent
366 education, 27% has secondary school education and nine percent has education below
secondary school. The survey shows that about 80% of entrepreneurs have prior
work experience (Yang and Zhang, 2012). In addition, compared to US and European
entrepreneurial firms, Chinese companies have more female executives, board members and
self-made billionaires; Chinese new ventures were much more likely to be privately owned
and self-funded; and, family support was associated with “transformational leadership
behavior” in China (Wenderoth, 2019).
Because of the fast-growing number of entrepreneurs and increasingly fierce competition
(Ahlstrom and Ding, 2014), Chinese entrepreneurs are looking for innovative ways to
connect and communicate with consumers. Social media, with their high penetration rate
and great popularity, have been widely used by Chinese entrepreneurs as an effective
marketing communication tool (Bonhomme, 2017; Chen et al., 2017). While social media
marketing (SMM) has become a routine for Chinese entrepreneurs to do business, little
academic research has been conducted to explore this particular phenomenon (Bonhomme,
2017; Chen et al., 2017). Thus, more systematic studies are needed to provide theoretical
insights and practical implications. To fill this research gap, we designed this study to
explore Chinese entrepreneurs’ perceptions and interpretations of SMM in their daily
business practices. We propose a broad and overarching research question: How do Chinese
entrepreneurs perceive and interpret social media marketing? Given the exploratory nature
of the topic, we adopted a qualitative approach. The major theoretical contribution of our
study is to expand the scholarship of both entrepreneurial marketing (EM) and SMM by
revealing rich meanings, dynamics, and nuances of SMM practices from Chinese
entrepreneurs’ emic perspectives. Similarly, our study also generates insights for Chinese
entrepreneurs to better capitalize social media to connect with their target audience thus
improves their business performance.

Literature review
Market orientation theory
Scholars have conceptualized market orientation (MO) from behavioral and cultural
perspectives (Homburg and Pflesser, 2000; Kirca et al., 2005). The behavioral perspective
refers MO as “the organizationwide generation of market intelligence pertaining to current
and future customer needs, dissemination of the intelligence across departments and
organization-wide responsiveness to it” (Kohli and Jaworski, 1990, p. 6). The cultural
perspective refers MO as “the organization culture that most effectively and efficiently
creates the necessary behaviors for the creation of superior value for buyers and, thus,
continuous superior performance for the business” (Narver and Slater, 1990, p. 21). Based on
the framework of Kirca et al. (2005), MO has three categories of antecedents (top
management factors, interdepartmental factors and organizational systems) and four
categories of consequences (organizational performance, customer consequences, innovation
consequences and employee consequences).
Recently, the study of the relationship between MO and entrepreneurial orientation (EO)
has become one of the most promising research areas in marketing and entrepreneurship
literature (Atuahene-Gima and Ko, 2001; Montiel-Campos, 2018). EO refers to the process,
practices and decision-making activities that leads to entrepreneurial activities (Covin and Social media
Wales, 2012; Lumpkin and Dess, 1996). EO and MO are different concepts but significantly marketing
related (Baker and Sinkula, 2009; Roskos and Klandt, 2007). For example, scholars found
that businesses with higher EO and MO are more likely to have higher performance and
product quality (Atuahene-Gima and Ko, 2001). Recently, Montiel-Campos (2018)
systematically reviewed the empirical literature of EO and MO and found that scholars are
using six approaches to study the relationships between EO and MO: corollary approach,
dependent variables approach, positional advantage approach, sequential approach, 367
alternative approach and complementary approach. In this study, MO and EO offer a
valuable theoretical perspective for us to understand Chinese entrepreneurs’ strategic
decisions regarding social media marketing. While MO and EO provide a broad guidance
for entrepreneurs to develop and implement their business and marketing strategies,
entrepreneurs’ willingness to adopt and proactive use of new technologies including social
media is a specific factor that might influence the performance and success of those
entrepreneurial businesses. Therefore, uses and gratifications theory (UGT) offers another
important theoretical framework for this study.

Uses and gratifications theory

UGT originated from the functionalist perspective on mass media communication. It was
first developed in research on the effectiveness of radio in the 1940s. Basically, it focuses on
the explanations for audience members’ motivations and associated behaviors. According
to Blumler and Katz’s (1974), UGT suggests that media users play an active role in choosing
and using the media. Users take an active part in the communication process and are goal
oriented in their media use. In other words, they seek out media sources that best fulfill their
needs. The basic assumption underlying UGT is that users are aware of their needs, know
media contents and have alternate choices to satisfy their needs. Since the 1940s, UGT has
been widely used in traditional mass communication research (for review see Palmgreen,
1984; Ruggiero, 2000).
In the past two decades, UGT has also been applied to new media contexts. Many
researchers have examined psychological and behavioral aspects of internet users to
identify a set of common underlying dimensions for Internet usage motivations (Ko et al.,
2005; Korgaonkar and Wolin, 1999; LaRose and Eastin, 2004; Lin, 1998). All these studies
have focused on two perspectives: media functions, such as information, entertainment,
convenience, social interaction (Ko et al., 2005; Korgaonkar and Wolin, 1999; Lin, 1998) and
social cognitive needs (LaRose and Eastin, 2004). In sum, UGT has been quite effective in
understanding motivations and needs for using the internet. However, all these studies have
concentrated on the general usage of the internet without considering the characteristics of
specific types of website.
Recently, more and more studies have used UGT to investigate social media (Barker,
2009; Gangadharbatla, 2008; Muntinga et al., 2011; Phua et al., 2017; Quan-Haase and Young,
2010; Raacke and Bonds-Raacke, 2008; Williams and Whiting, 2013). In a study on college
students’ attitude toward and willingness to join social networking sites (SNSs),
Gangadharbatla (2008) suggested that internet self-efficacy, need to belong and collective
self-esteem all positively influence attitudes toward SNS. In addition, attitude toward SNS
mediates the relationship between willingness to join SNS and internet self-efficacy, the
relationship between willingness to join SNS and need to belong and the relationship
between willingness to join SNS and collective self-esteem. In two similar studies, Raacke
and Bonds-Raacke (2008) uncovered that maintenance and development of friendship are
the two key gratifications for college students to use social media, and Barker (2009)
JRME revealed that social identity gratifications and social compensation are two major motives
23,2 for older adolescents to use SNSs. Using surveys and interviews, Quan-Haase and Young
(2010) identified six gratifications for young consumers to use social media including
pastime, affection, fashion, share problems, sociability and social information. Williams and
Whiting (2013) conducted 25 in-depth interviews and found ten uses and gratifications for
social media usage which are social interaction, information seeking, pass time,
368 entertainment, relaxation, communicatory utility, convenience utility, expression of opinion,
information sharing and surveillance/knowledge about others. Phua et al. (2017) compared
users’ gratifications of four social media platforms and found that Snapchat users scored
highest for passing time, sharing problems, and improving social knowledge, while
Instagram users scored highest for showing affection, following fashion and demonstrating
sociability. In the meantime, Twitter users had highest levels of brand community
identification and membership intention, while Instagram users had highest degrees of
brand community engagement and commitment. Muntinga et al. (2011) examined
consumers’ online brand-related activities (COBRA) on social media and found that three
different types of motivations for COBRA which are consuming, contributing and creating.
While extensive research has been conducted to examine people’s motivations using social
media, all of the research focuses on people’s gratifications for non-business purposes.
Especially, social media have become one of the most important marketing tools for
entrepreneurs (Chen et al., 2017). It would be interesting to apply this theoretical framework
to investigate entrepreneurs’ motivations of social media use for their marketing goals. In
particular, we use this theoretical framework to examine Chinese entrepreneurs’
gratifications of using social media for marketing purposes.

Entrepreneurial marketing
EM is an emerging field. There is no widely accepted definition of EM yet. In the previous
literature, EM is considered either as an orientation or a competitive source. Hills and
Hultman (2011) define EM as “a spirit, an orientation as well as a process of passionately
pursuing opportunities and launching and growing ventures that create perceived customer
value through relationships by employing innovativeness, creativity, selling, market
immersion, networking and flexibility” (p. 3). Bocconcelli et al. (2018) describe EM as “a
characteristically situation-specific without pre-planning activity. It implies the use of
specific practices – in line with the decision-making processes of SMEs – and emphasizes
the role of the entrepreneur, whose professional experience, creativity, propensity for
innovation, dynamism, intuition and natural ability to listen to customers are seen as
primary sources of competitiveness” (p. 229). No matter from which perspective, EM
emphasizes creativity, innovation and flexibility.
Early work of EM only focuses on the overlap between conventional marketing theories
and entrepreneurship (Collinson and Shaw, 2001). However, recent research tends to agree
that EM is a distinguished field (Collinson and Shaw, 2001; Hills et al., 2008; Miles et al.,
2015; Morrish, 2011). As a result, two special interest groups (SIG) were established
exclusively focusing on entrepreneurial marketing: Entrepreneurial Marketing SIG AMA
(www.ama.org/entrepreneurial-marketing-sig/) and Entrepreneurial and Small Business
Marketing SIG – Academy of Marketing (www.academyofmarketing.org/sigs/
entrepreneurial-small-business-marketing-sig/).
Scholars argue that entrepreneurial firms are facing the environment which is more
uncertain, discontinuous and unclear than traditional companies (Collinson and Shaw, 2001).
As the nature of entrepreneurial firms, they usually do not have the resources to support
them doing conventional marketing activities. For example, some of the barriers are “(1) the
lack of economies of scale; (2) severe resource constraints; (3) a limited geographic market Social media
presence; (4) a limited market image; (5) little brand loyalty or market share; (6) little marketing
specialized management expertise; (7) decision-making under even more imperfect
information conditions than in larger firms; (8) a marked scarcity of time per major
management task; (9) a scarcity of professional managers; and, (10) a mixture of business
and personal goals” (Hills et al., 2008, p. 102). In addition, EM is facing other challenges such
as, globalization processes, technological development and market instability (Bocconcelli
et al., 2018). Therefore, the mainstream marketing theories, processes and tools are not well 369
served for entrepreneurial firms (Hills et al., 2008).
While those entrepreneurial companies are facing many barriers and challenges, they
usually have intuitive and rich understanding of customer needs, market trends and market
positioning thus are successful in marketing in unconventional ways (Hills et al., 2008).
Studies show that EM is dynamic, flexible, immersive, low cost and growth orientated
(Morrish et al., 2010). Although entrepreneurial firms do not use conventional marketing
activities, their social networks can provide accurate information and advices about their
marketing decisions (Collinson and Shaw, 2001). During the process, entrepreneurs,
customers and the interrelationship between them are the core emphasis of EM (Morrish,
2011; Morrish et al., 2010). Scholars found few of entrepreneurs carry out any formal market
planning and many of them do not believe in the rational, sequential manners which is
assumed in the conventional marketing (Hills et al., 2008). Hence, EM is characterized by
intuition, informality and speed of decision-making (Collinson and Shaw, 2001).
Along with the increasing use of the Internet compared to other communication tools,
social media applications provide a new approach for EM. Social media applications can
provide rich communications between entrepreneurs and customers with low costs and high
interactions (Chen et al., 2017). For example, scholars found that entrepreneurial firms use
Twitter to reduce uncertainty and increase perceived differentiation in the eyes of
stakeholders (Fischer and Rebecca Reuber, 2014). Scholars also found “a web presence
integrated with meaningful and sustained social media promotion can have a positive
impact on business success in terms of increased traffic, awareness and revenues” (Jones
et al., 2015, p. 611). However, some of entrepreneurial firms do not apply the full potential of
the social media applications and are not benefiting fully from them because of the lack of
knowledge about them (Taiminen and Karjaluoto, 2015). For example, scholars found the
reason for some entrepreneurs adopting social media is the perception that the social media
are a new essential tool for business growth, although they do not have a purposeful or
thoughtful agenda on how to use it (Durkin et al., 2013).

Social media marketing

Social media are internet-based applications that offer the creation and exchange of user-
generate content and facilitate interaction and collaboration between participants (Kaplan
and Haenlein, 2010). Social media have various forms including blogs and microblogs (such
as Twitter), social networking sites (such as Facebook), virtual worlds (such as Second Life),
collaborative projects (such as Wikipedia), content communities (such as YouTube) and
mobile messaging apps (such as Snapchat) (Alves et al., 2016). While social media present in
different formats, they share four common characteristics which are social media are Web
2.0 internet-based applications; user-generated content (UGC) is a key function of the social
media; users create service-specific profiles for the site or app that are designed and
maintained by the social media organization; and social media facilitate the development of
online social networks by connecting a user’s profile with those of other individuals or
groups (Obar and Wildman, 2015). Given the unique characteristics and popularity of social
JRME media, different companies and organizations have incorporated SMM into their daily
23,2 marketing practices (Chen et al., 2017; Mills and Plangger, 2015). Felix et al. (2017) defined
SMM as an interdisciplinary and cross-functional concept which focuses on using social
media to achieve organizational goals by creating values for stakeholders.
Previous research on SMM focused either on general discussion of SMM (Felix et al.,
2017; Whiting and Deshpande, 2016) or a specific social media platform, such as Facebook
370 (Labrecque et al., 2011; Rowley, 2004), Twitter (Mamic and Almaraz, 2013; Thoring, 2011),
Instagram (Eriksson et al., 2015; Ginsberg, 2015) and Snapchat (Phua et al., 2017; Sashittal
et al., 2016). Whiting and Deshpande (2016) reviewed the SMM research in the past eight
years and summarized that major benefits of SMM include the possibility of influence on
individual stage of buying process, a greater understanding of customer segments, a
support of customer relationship building and maintaining, a cost-effective marketing
communication and a better connection with consumers through customized messages,
which leads to a higher customer loyalty and longer carryover effects. In another study of
comprehensive literature on SMM, Alves et al. (2016) found that many studies of SMM focus
on consumer perspectives and use quantitative research methods, and that among limited
number of qualitative studies the qualitative content analysis predominates. To understand
the role of social media in the context of marketing, Felix et al. (2017) conducted in-depth
interviews among SMM experts and uncovered four pairs of dialectic views with regard to
SMM scope (defenders vs. explorers), SMM culture (conservatism vs. modernism), SMM
structure (hierarchies vs. networks), and SMM governance (autocracy vs. anarchy). By
reviewing and evaluating social media practices, Constantinides (2014) proposed two
possible SMM strategies: a passive approach that uses social media as sources of customer
voice and marketing intelligence and an active approach that uses social media as direct
marketing and public relations channels, as channels of customer influence, as tools of
personalizing products, and as platforms of co-operation and customer-generated
innovation.
In addition to the general discussion of SMM, previous studies also explore SMM in
different social media platforms. In the literature, scholars found that Facebook is a unique
social media platform for companies to form virtual relationships with consumers
(Dehghani and Tumer, 2015), to display consumers’ thoughts and opinions of the company’s
advertising (Labrecque et al., 2011; Rowley, 2004), and to create a brand page to engage
consumers at a deeper level (Dehghani and Tumer, 2015). Previous research has examined
Twitter as a form of electronic word of mouth (Jin and Phua, 2014), companies and
organizations’ strategic use of Twitter (Mamic and Almaraz, 2013; Thoring, 2011) and
motivations and constraints of Twitter sport consumption (Witkemper et al., 2012). Similar
to Twitter marketing research, previous studies on Instagram marketing mainly focused on
companies’ strategic use of Instagram in a specific industry or a particular social group
(Eriksson et al., 2015; Ginsberg, 2015; Johansson and Eklöf Wallsbeck, 2014; Salleh et al.,
2015; Wally and Koshy, 2014). As a relatively new social media platform, Snapchat has been
examined by limited number of studies (Phua et al., 2017; Sashittal et al., 2016). Snapchat
was found not to be a strong social media platform to cultivate brand relationships when
compared to other social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (Phua et al., 2017),
and Snapchat is better used for marketing familiar brands and building a sense of
relatability and inclusiveness (Sashittal et al., 2016).
In the English language literature, research on SMM in the context of China is relatively
scarce (Chan and Guillet, 2011; Chen et al., 2017; Denizci Guillet et al., 2016; Zhou and Wang,
2014). Chan and Guillet (2011) examined 67 hotels’ SMM usage in Hong Kong and found that
those hotels generally had a poor performance in using social media to learn about
customers. In a similar study, Denizci Guillet et al. (2016) investigated how 133 top hotel Social media
brands use SMM in China and found that those Chinese hotels did not take full advantage of marketing
social media to achieve their marketing goals. Zhou and Wang (2014) explored how Chinese
major cities use social media for city marketing and suggested that using social media is an
appropriate tactic to promote cities because of its participative, interactive, open and
transparent nature. Recently, more and more studies have been conducted to explore
entrepreneurship and social media marketing.
371
Entrepreneurship and social media marketing
Olanrewaju et al. (2020) conducted a comprehensive literature review on social media and
entrepreneurship research and found that research has been focused on both motivations
and impacts of social media usage among entrepreneurs; entrepreneurs majorly use social
media to market their products; entrepreneurs also use social media for searching
information, networking with other entrepreneurs and creating value for their businesses;
company performance has been used as the major measure of the effectiveness of social
media marketing; most of the research has examined Facebook and research on other social
media platforms is scarce; and entrepreneurship and social media research in developing
countries has received little attention.
Although the number is still limited, scholars have started investigating
entrepreneurship and social media in the context of China. For example, in a recent study,
Chen et al. (2017) examined Chinese entrepreneurial firms’ strategic use of social media and
found that the major purposes for those companies to use social media include generating
awareness, sharing information, cultivating long-term relationships, developing new
businesses and building images and reputations. In the meantime, those companies also use
social media for marketing and communication purposes. Focusing on WeChat, Bonhomme
(2017) discussed how entrepreneurs could leverage WeChat to offer value-added services to
engage Chinese consumers, and Hansen (2020) examined how digital entrepreneurs take
advantage of WeChat to initiate and maintain multi-layered networking activities. Xu et al.
(2019) interviewed 25 undergraduates and surveyed 100 respondents on their perception on
social media on start-up businesses and found that generally young people consider social
media important for marketing communication purposes. From the previous literature, it
can be seen that both entrepreneurs and EM have unique characteristics differentiating from
regular business owners and traditional marketing approaches (Bocconcelli et al., 2018;
Collinson and Shaw, 2001). Social media, as innovative media platforms, have brought both
opportunities and challenges for entrepreneurs to communicate, interact and engage with
consumers. Thus, we designed this study to explore Chinese entrepreneurs’ perceptions and
interpretations of social media marketing.

RQ. How do Chinese entrepreneurs perceive and interpret social media marketing?

Methodology
The target population of this study is adult Chinese entrepreneurs who have started at least
one business and are currently running one. Qualitative research method, specifically the in-
depth interviews via a secured video chatting software – Vidyo were used to collect data
(McCracken, 1988). Vidyo is a video chatting software which has similar functions as Skype.
The reason to adopt this software is simply to comply the security requirement of the first
author’s university. Purposive sampling and snowball sampling were used to recruit
interview participants. Specifically, based on the characteristics of the target population, one
JRME of the researchers initially recruited seven qualified participants via social networking
23,2 referrals. After that, each participant was asked to recommend their qualified friends to
participate. In total, 18 Chinese entrepreneurs participated in the study (Table 1). Those
participants are diverse in their business fields and entrepreneurial experiences. While some
participants are running start-ups, others have been operating their businesses for a
relatively long time. When we conducted the interviews, our focus was their perception on
372 entrepreneurial marketing and social media marketing. The variety of their business types
and entrepreneurial experiences broadened the scope of the investigation and enhanced the
richness of our data. Each interview lasted around 60 minutes. To provide an accurate
record of participants’ comments, all the interviews were audio recorded and professionally
transcribed. We used the phenomenological reduction method (Moustakas, 1994) to analyze
data.
Data analysis followed the principles of phenomenological reduction (Moustakas, 1994).
The first step of phenomenological reduction is horizontalization, which means when
analyzing data researchers should not assume an initial hierarchy of “reality” rather than
consider all data equally important. To do this, the researcher took extensive notes
throughout the interviews, listened at least twice to each recording, and read each transcript
at least two times. The second step of phenomenological reduction is to delimit the invariant
horizons or meaning units. In this stage, the major job for researchers was to identify and
compare repeated or similar words, phrases and sentences appearing in every transcript and
grouped them into meaning units. The third step of phenomenological reduction is the
formation of themes. During this phase, the researchers focused on the internal relationships
and structures of the meaning units and grouped them into appropriate themes.

Results
Based on the results of our interviews, we find Chinese entrepreneurs have good
understandings of SMM. They believe SMM is a necessary way to interact with customers
and SMM can provide flexibility and sensitivity which are important for entrepreneurial
marketing and are not easy to achieve through traditional marketing activities. When they
choose social media applications, they will match the purpose of marketing activity with the
characteristics of the social media. They have developed the specific strategies for different
social media applications. In the meantime, they are facing some challenges, such as
breaking the communication clutter, measuring the results and avoiding overdependence on
a particular social media. In the following sections, we discuss our findings in detail about
Chinese entrepreneurs’ perceptions on SMM, SMM strategies, WeChat marketing and SMM
challenges (Figure 1).

Perception of social media marketing

Entrepreneurial social media marketing: a necessity. While our participants displayed a
variety of understandings of social media and SMM, they tend to think that SMM is a must-
have communication and promotion tool for entrepreneurial firms in today’s competitive
environment. The participants’ interpretation of social media is an important reference that
shapes their interpretation of SMM. According to the participants, social media have been
seamlessly integrated into people’s daily lives and influenced every aspect of their everyday
lives. Different from previous research on motivations of personal use of social media which
focus on social interaction, information and entertainment (Phua et al., 2017; Quan-Haase
and Young, 2010; Williams and Whiting, 2013), Chinese entrepreneurs in this study
highlighted the penetration, closeness and interactivity of social media. Given the perceived
nature and characteristics of social media, our participants deemed SMM as a necessary
 Entrepreneurship
Name Age Gender Business size duration Position Social media platform Business field

1. Yue 24 Female 15 people 7 months Partner WeChat, Weibo, Zhihu Life style
2. Tom Around 30 Male 5 people 2 and a half years Owner Weibo App and media
3. Lia 25 Female 5 people Half year Owner Wechat, Weibo, Live Travel
streaming
4. Sherry 24 Female 5 people 1 year Partner Wechat (Public account Clothing
and private account)
Weibo
5. Nancy 40 Female 60 people 5 years Owner WeChat, Tieba, Weibo E-commerce
6. Jasper 27 Male 8 people 2 years Owner WeChat, QQ App
7. Fan 44 Male 10 people 3 years Owner WeChat Architecture
8. Mia 34 Female 18 people 7 years Partner WeChat (Public account Advertising
and private account)
9. Rocky 28 Male 20 people 2 years Partner WeChat, Baidu Tieba, Technology
Douban, Zhihu
10. Mike 30 Male 4 people 3 years Marketing WeChat, Weibo, Live Media
Director streaming
11. Lindsay 27 Female 9 people 1 year Partner WeChat (public account Art
and private account),
Weibo,
12. Olivia 36 Female 3 people 2 years Partner WeChat, Douban, Live Life style
streaming
13. Vivian 29 Female 100 people 3 years Partner WeChat, Weibo Technology
Vice president
of marketing
14. Benny 40 Male 21 people 14 years Owner WeChat Chemical
15. Yong 38 Male 6 people 10 years Owner WeChat Entertainment
16. Liu 38 Male 22 people 12 years Owner WeChat Logistics
17. Tim 49 Male 16 people 5 years Owner WeChat Food and Drink
18. Felix 24 Male 22 people 4 years Owner WeChat, Weibo Social Media Marketing

Profile of
Table 1.
marketing
Social media

participants
373
JRME way for entrepreneurial firms to attract potential consumers, as well as to build and
23,2 maintain relationships with current consumers, suggesting that those Chinese
entrepreneurs are adopting an active approach of SMM strategies (Constantinides, 2014).
Similar to previous research findings (Chen et al., 2017), according to our participants, SMM
is also an important tool to build companies’ competitive advantage and keep companies’
brand image, especially long-term image.
374 Social media are much faster, and they are relatively cost effective and affordable. You can also
clearly see the effects and reactions from users. Social media also are closer to users. (Yue, 24,
female, partner)

I think the trend of social media is getting stronger. It cannot be avoided by anyone or any
industry, it is a sure thing to do [. . .] In fact, social media is a way to let you quickly stand out as
long as you find the right path. (Lia, 25, female, owner)

It is necessary to have an account on social media. I think a public account is a promotion tool and
a place you introduce your company to publics. If you keep updating your account, people will
know that your company is alive. Even users may not check your account for a long time, but at
least he will know the company is running. If you do not (update), users may lose confidence.
Social media are a platform to show company’s long-term image, companies should continue to do
so (to use social media). (Rocky, 28, male, partner)

Entrepreneurial social media marketing: flexibility and sensitivity. When comparing social
marketing usage between traditional companies and entrepreneurial firms, the participants
considered that two of the biggest differences are the flexibility and sensitivity. Given the
nature and characteristics of entrepreneurial firms (Hills et al., 2008), entrepreneurs are
flexible to use social media to achieve their marketing goals. In many cases, their marketing
activities on social media were driven by their intuition and experience rather than research
or a plan (Collinson and Shaw, 2001). In some cases, they would take risks by relying solely
on social media to launch all their marketing activities. In contrast, traditional companies
have many organizational and structural rules, and regulations that may hinder them to
creatively use social media for marketing. In addition, social media are rarely the only
channel for those companies to deliver their marketing campaigns. In this sense, the SMM
scope and the SMM culture of those Chinese entrepreneurs’ businesses could be categorized
as “explorer” and “modernism” (Felix et al., 2017), respectively.
In the state-owned enterprise, contents in social media are very official. Besides, before publishing
an article on the public account, the state-owned enterprise has very strict rules to censor or check
it. (Yue, 24, female, partner)

Strategy of SMM
Perception of SMM
WeChat Marketing

Figure 1.
Chinese
entrepreneurs’
experience of social Challenge of SMM
media marketing
 I think the division of the department in traditional companies is still relatively clear, and their Social media
social media marketing focuses more on contents. For traditional corporates, social media are a
part of marketing and are a composition of an entire campaign. But for start-up companies, social
marketing
media marketing can be expanded as an entire marketing strategy. For example, social media
marketing can be expanded to public relations or some offline activities. (Vivian, 29, female, Vice
president of marketing, partner)

In addition, the participants also mentioned that entrepreneurial firms are more sensitive to the 375
changes and trends on social media thus can quickly adapt and adjust their marketing activities
accordingly (Collinson and Shaw, 2001). Traditional companies, by contrast, may not be able to
follow the fast changes of social media thus may miss some marketing opportunities. In other
words, social media offer entrepreneurial firms an important platform to build their competitive
advantage over traditional companies. It seems that the SMM structure and the SMM governance
of those entrepreneurial firms are more aligned with “networks” and “anarchy” (Felix et al., 2017)
that offer them the organizational infrastructure to promptly change and discover opportunities.

I think traditional companies emphasize on system and structure. This person is only responsible
for this thing, and that person is only responsible for that thing. But for entrepreneurial firms,
when I realize I need to do something, I just quickly find a person to do it. Even there isn’t a
specific position or a person who originally is responsible for that. When I am trying to do a new
thing, I will constantly correct myself during the process. Therefore, when traditional companies
find that there is a trend or successful case, I probably have done that for a year. (Nancy, 40,
female, owner)

I think traditional companies mainly use traditional channels in marketing, but entrepreneurial
firms have more ways. Although traditional companies gradually start utilizing social media,
their minds or their abilities to follow new trends are still weaker than entrepreneurial firms.
(Rocky, 28, male, partner)
MO literature suggests that marketing activities generate, disseminate and response to
market intelligence increase businesses’ performance (Bhuian et al., 2005; Kirca et al., 2005;
Lam et al., 2010). For example, scholars found that MO has positive effect on business model
innovation and strategic flexibility enhances this effect (Yang et al., 2020). Especially, SMM
is a good tool for entrepreneurs to achieve IT market orientation which refers to “the extent
to which IT is aligned to manage customer and competitor information and internal
activities” (Celuch and Murphy, 2010, p. 131). The flexibility and sensibility provided by
SMM can help entrepreneurs to use their limited resources better than traditional
companies.

Strategy of social media marketing

Social media selection: availability vs popularity. Previous research indicated that Chinese
businesses are using different social media for a variety of marketing activities (Chan and
Guillet, 2011; Denizci Guillet et al., 2016; Zhou and Wang, 2014). However, how Chinese
entrepreneurs make strategic decisions to identify appropriate social media channels are
unknown. Our findings suggest that when selecting social media platforms, the participants’
decisions seemed to be driven by two crucial factors: availability and popularity. On one
hand, the participants mentioned that they used different kinds of social media platforms
such as WeChat, Weibo, Zhihu and Douban (see Table 2 for a comparison of different social
media) to build social presence and reach a wide range of consumers. On the other hand,
they also indicated that WeChat is the most important social media platform for them to do
various marketing activities because of its popularity (Bonhomme, 2017; Hansen, 2020).
JRME
Social
23,2 medium Key features

WeChat  WeChat is an instant messaging app for Android, iPhone, Windows Phone,
BlackBerry, Symbian, and Java
 It was established in January, 2011
376  WeChat users can do many things including playing games, sending money to people,
making video calls, ordering food, reading news, booking doctor appointments and
more
 WeChat has 963 million active monthly users in 2017
 64.3% WeChat users are male, and 35.7% WeChat users are female in 2015
 44.4% WeChat users have more than 200 contacts
 Top 10 activities conducted by WeChat users include browsing and posting on
moments, sharing information, reading content via followed public accounts, sending
and receiving money, mobile payments, sharing stickers/emoji, using WeChat shake,
using WeChat sport, gaming, and social commence
 Main purposes for users to follow a WeChat public account are acquire information
and news, follow a business and receive promotion information, access services
provided by pubic accounts, read about politics, business consulting, and government
and public service

Weibo  Sina Weibo is a social media platform for people to create, distribute and discover
Chinese-language content. It is an open platform for people and organizations to
publicly express themselves in real time, interact with others and stay connected with
the world
 Sina Weibo was established in August, 2010
 Weibo has 392 million monthly active users in 2017
 Among Weibo users, 43.7% are female and 56.3% are male
 15% Weibo users are under 18 years old, 27.6% are 18–22 years old, 38.6% are 23–
30 years old, 17.6% are 31 – 40 years old, 5.6% are 41 years and older

Zhihu  Zhihu is a knowledge sharing Q&A internet community

 It was established in 2011
 Zhihu has over 160 million registered users
 51.6% Zhihu users are male, 48.4% are female
 Top three industries that Zhihu users work in are Internet, software, and finance
 Top three universities that Zhihu users graduated are Peking University, Tsinghua
University, and Zhejiang University

Douban  Douban is a Chinese social networking service website allowing registered users to
record information and create content related to film, books, music, recent events and
activities in Chinese cities
 It was established in 2005
Table 2.  Douban has 160 registered users and 300 monthly active users
Chinese social media
(continued)
platform comparison
 Social media
Social
medium Key features marketing
 Among Douban users, more than 50% are 20 to 29 years old, and more than 30% are
30 to 39 years old
 Top three cities that have most Douban users are Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou
 Compared to general Internet users, Douban have more users who are above college 377
education and visit Douban at working places

Source: Statista, Wikipedia and Alexa Table 2.

In other words, those entrepreneurs use different social media platforms to achieve the
purpose of wide coverage and reach while use WeChat to develop and maintain
relationships with consumers, as well as to engage them at a deeper level.
We used WeChat and Zhihu. Actually, in the beginning, we also used Weibo, but it didn’t go well.
There weren’t too many people following us on Weibo. In Zhihu, we just constantly answered
questions, answered the questions that related to our business category [. . .] But we mainly
focused on WeChat. (Yue, 24, female, partner)

The most frequently used platform is WeChat, the public account in WeChat. Besides, we also use
QQ, and BBS in universities. (Jasper, 27, male, owner)

In terms of social media, there are two parts of the business: business to business and business to
consumers. Each business form has its own WeChat public account. Besides, we also have
WeChat and QQ groups. . . Weibo is also an important platform for us. (Vivian, 29, female, vice
president of marketing, partner)

We mainly use WeChat for marketing and we have WeChat public account and WeChat groups.
Besides, we also post activities on Douban. (Olivia, 36, female, partner)
Social media strategy: matching media characteristics. According to the participants, one
major social media strategy is to match marketing contents and formats with characteristics
of selected social media platforms. As mentioned previously, the participants tend to
integrate a variety of social media platforms into their marketing plans. Like the most
popular social media in the western countries (Phua et al., 2017), each Chinese social media
platform has its unique characteristics. For example, WeChat is an acquaintance based and
more private social media platform compared to Weibo which is a more open and public
channel. Zhihu and Douban are both community-based social media. But Zhihu is a
question-and-answer website where questions are created, answered, edited, and organized
by the users of the community whereas Douban is an interest-based social media platform
where people with similar interests and hobbies could communicate and interact with each
other. Given the differences among social media platforms, the participants believed that to
achieve SMM success, entrepreneurial firms have to understand characteristics of a social
media platform and create marketing activities that fit the social media platform. As UGT
suggested (Blumler and Katz, 1974), Chinese entrepreneurs are using different social media
platforms to satisfy their marketing needs and achieve their business goals.
I think Weibo is a better platform to follow opinion leaders and to follow celebrities. In fact,
companies don’t have strengths or advantages on Weibo. Weibo is mostly used for finding a new
JRME point and following news and events. Weibo is a tool for the dissemination of events. (Nancy, 40,
female, owner)
23,2
There are great differences between Weibo and WeChat. WeChat is mainly for acquaintance
social, which is more critical to stimulate users to repost company’s messages, so that the
company can promote things. However, Weibo is for broader community, for publics. As long as
there is one point that touch users in one aspect. Weibo is easier to achieve a virial spread. (Lia, 25,
378 female, owner)

If we want audiences to send us private messages, ask for private interactions, or we want to
listen to their real thoughts, we will use WeChat. Because the cost of posting in WeChat is very
low, people open WeChat every day. When an audience posts comments to us, it directly showed
in the background, and it won’t be seen by others. However, in Weibo, we usually update daily
activities, regular activities, such as giving tickets. So, WeChat is more of a private platform, an
interactive platform. Weibo, it is more commercial, more related to marketing. (Mike, 30, male,
Marketing director)

WeChat marketing
Previous research indicated that WeChat is a valuable social media platform for
entrepreneurs to engage customers and maintain relations (Bonhomme, 2017; Hansen, 2020).
Findings of this study offered detailed and updated information on why and how Chinese
entrepreneurs use WeChat for marketing purposes. The participants indicated that WeChat
is the most widely applied and most frequently used SMM tool because of its large user
base, high level of user engagement, frequency of user activities, easiness to use and
capability of data mining and management. Those entrepreneurs, who use WeChat to
communicate and interact with multiple stakeholders such as clients, consumers and
members, use WeChat to post events, introduce products, manage registered members,
build brand image, categorize consumers and build online communities. Specifically, they
discussed how to strategically use public and private WeChat accounts, take advantage of
different layers of social circle for information dissemination and create contents that are
innovative, creative and diversified.
Public account vs private account. All the participants mentioned that they established
organizational accounts on WeChat and regularly post updates on those accounts to
communicate with different types of consumers. Although the specific contents vary, it
seems that the participants mainly use WeChat public accounts for the purposes of publicity
and social presence. In contrast, the participants also indicated that they use their individual
WeChat accounts for marketing purposes in an indirect and subtle way. Those
entrepreneurial firms use public accounts to showcase their companies and products, inform
and educate consumers and post coupons and other promotional activities while use private
accounts to deliver more customized information or serve as the second level communication
channel. While the public account communication has the strength of wide range of
coverage, the private account communication has the benefits of direct communication,
word of mouth and a high level of trustworthiness.
On WeChat, we have a public account and a private account. On public account, we share stories
and products of our studio. On private account, we communicate and interact with our customers.
(Lindsay, 27, female, partner)

I think the customer-service account works better. Because our customer-service account is a
private account, if customers have any questions, they can ask us via this account directly, and
 we can quickly reply them. On public account, it is hard to reply followers’ comments in time. Social media
(Sherry, 24, female, partner)
marketing
Sharing articles on our private account works better. Personally, I feel the effect of public account
becomes weaker and weaker. The frequency of opening and browsing public accounts becomes
less. . . For us, the private account is more effective than the public account. Because of friend’s
circle, potential customers, old customers, and acquaintances are all in private accounts. And
indeed, some customers found us and built business relationships with us through their friends of 379
our private account. (Mia, 34, female, partner)
Social circle dissemination. One of the biggest advantages of WeChat marketing, as the
participants indicated, is the effect of the multi-layer social circle dissemination. As
discussed previously, WeChat is an acquaintance based social media platform. Especially, at
the initial stage of WeChat development, users can only invite and add people who they
know to join WeChat. Therefore, compared to other social media platforms, users’
communications and socializations on WeChat are closer and more intimate and have a
higher level of trust. Thus, information that is delivered via private accounts posting on
moments is perceived to be more positive and trustworthy. In addition, as most WeChat user
has hundreds or thousands of friends, if a user posts a piece of information on his/her
moment, all his/her friends could possibly see the post and repost the information on his/her
moments. Hence, the posted information could be circulated to a much wider range than its
original audience. Finally, a unique feature of WeChat is that users can set up WeChat
groups, and each group could have maximum of 500 members. Usually, a user may belong
to more than one WeChat groups. For example, one of the participants indicated that he has
more than 100 WeChat groups. According to the participants, those WeChat groups have
also become an important marketing place.
In the first stage, we will repost article on public account to our private account’s group, so our
friends will see it. Then, our friends may repost the article to their groups, so that the article
spread to my friends’ friends. (Fan, 44, male, owner)

We publish some content in the company’s WeChat group, employees usually actively repost
those contents to their groups. When we sent contents to a group, there is the second-layer
dissemination. For example, other business customers, they may think the article or the content
we post is in good quality, then they wanted their own customers to see this content, so they will
send it to their own groups. (Vivian, 29, female, vice president of marketing, partner)

We set up some WeChat groups for people who have pets, and each group has about 50 people. If
we have some activities or we want to ask advices, we will post them to those groups [. . .] WeChat
groups are effective, many people communicate with us in those groups. (Yue, 24, female, partner)

We have different kinds of WeChat groups, and there are 200 people in each group. There is a
WeChat group for consumers who are beginners, and they don’t know much about wine, but they
can afford good wines. There is a group for veterans. Besides, we also have groups on Douban. So,
we will post some wine tasting activities to these groups. (Olivia, 36, female, partner)
Content is key: positioning, innovation, creativity and diversity. When discussing how to
achieve success of WeChat marketing, the participants emphasized that the most important
factor is the content. Given the low entry level and common practice of WeChat marketing,
consumers are bombarded by different kinds of information on WeChat. to break the clutter,
as the participants suggested, marketers have to design and develop an innovative, creative
and diversified content. In particular, they mentioned some tactics such as adding
JRME authenticity, using celebrities and key opinion leaders (KOLs), following hot issues and
23,2 trends. In addition, they also mentioned that all contents should be based on an in-depth
understanding of the fit between target markets and the characteristics of WeChat.
We saw other brands’ public accounts on WeChat, but most of them did not have a good quality.
So, we wanted to distinguish us from them, and we wanted to produce high-quality contents. At
that time, there were also some fashion corporations wanted to cooperate with us. Therefore, at
380 least, we are special in this industry. (Yue, 24, female, partner)

The most impressive post is a job post. At that time, I was looking for an employee. So, I wrote an
article and posted on our WeChat public account. The article was not so structured like what I
wrote as a magazine editor. What I wrote was all about my true feelings. I talked about why I
start my business, what problems we overcome, and the ideal for the industry. Then, this article
gained thousands of reposts, and our public accounts gained hundreds of new followers. (Olivia,
36, female, partner)

It is interesting that forms showed in public accounts are more and more diverse. For example,
this year, an entrepreneurial team used a very creative way to promote their activity. They used a
long picture. They posted a long picture on the WeChat, and people must scroll it on the phone to
read the story. Now there are more and more diverse ways to do social media marketing. People
lost interests in regular words and pictures, so companies began to use videos, animations, long
pictures, and so on. (Lia, 25, female, owner)

I think it is very important to figure out who are your audiences in the process of doing social
media marketing. What do your audiences like to eat or to play? How much can they spend, 500
yuan or 5,000 yuan? Audiences are clear about these in their mind. If what you do doesn’t fit their
preference, you will lose them. (Mike, 30, male, marketing director)

Challenge of social media marketing

Given the unique nature and characteristics of entrepreneurial firms, they are facing more
challenges when launching and engaging in marketing endeavors (Bocconcelli et al., 2018;
Hills et al., 2008). Findings of the current study revealed specific challenges for Chinese
entrepreneurs in the context of SMM. From the participants’ perspective, the major
challenges they encountered when using SMM include social media clutter, conversion to
sales and overdependence on the platforms. In today’s market, social media have become a
must-have marketing tool for different types of organizations and businesses. Consumers
are encountering numerous marketing information on a variety of social media platforms in
their daily lives. Consequently, it is getting harder and harder to break the communication
clutter and get consumers’ attention.
I think the biggest difficulty is that information is created so fast, and now social media share is
down. What’s more, social media threshold is relatively low, people use social media to generate
all kinds of information, so information is explosive. (Vivian, 29, female, vice president of
marketing, partner)

Now, social media are saturated. Some people said there were more people who create and operate
social media public accounts than people who read those social media accounts. However, in fact
only few public accounts succeed. (Lia, 25, female, owner)

It’s hard to do public accounts now. It is difficult to attract people to click on your account and
view your post articles, unless your content is extraordinarily good. (Jasper, 27, male, owner)
 In addition, although social media are easier to monitor and track than traditional media, it is still Social media
hard to measure the relationship between marketing activities on social media and sales of the
product like traditional media. In particular, the participants pointed out that many people who
marketing
are following the company accounts do not actually purchase products from the companies. In
other words, there is a disconnection between social media account followers and actual
consumers.

It drives me crazy that why consumers don’t buy our products, the conversion rate is very low. It is 381
difficult for you to detect whether people who browse your social media place orders or not.
However, you know how many people buy your products, and how many people you covered in
promotion. But you can’t ask users directly, why don’t you buy (products)? (Yue, 24, female, partner)
Finally, some participants also discussed the possible risk of overdependence on a particular
social media platform. If an entrepreneurial firm depends too much on a single social media
platform, it has to face the risk that it might lose all useful data and information tied to the
account when the social media company decided to close the account.
Now there are many big public accounts, such as XXX, last year, it was evaluated and worth more
than 700 million, and then Tencent (WeChat) shut it down. So, on this basis, you are still nervous.
Because your users are on the platform of WeChat, so they may suddenly not belong to you any
more. That is the reason why we always promote our APP, and maintenance of users in the APP.

Online giants are so large. Maybe you have just started to get attention, then you will be killed.
For example, Mi Meng, (was killed by Tencent). It is actually an individual owned public account,
and it is attached to the platform of Tencent. In fact, Mi Meng also attracts new data traffic to
Tencent platform, so Tencent may not kill it to re-attract users. However, for the company like us,
in fact, we want users to follow us on WeChat and bring them to our own platforms. However,
there is a limited number of people, and people have limited time, so Tencent certainly doesn’t
want this. With Tencent’s financial power, you can easily be killed from the market. (Lia, 25,
female, owner)

Discussion
After years of practice, Chinese entrepreneurs’ usage of SMM have been greatly improved.
They already have much better understanding of how to use SMM, who to target, and what
content is more important. We designed this study to offer an updated theoretical
knowledge on Chinese entrepreneurs’ perceptions and interpretations of SMM. Consistent
with the EM literature (Hills et al., 2008; Morrish et al., 2010), we found that SMM is one of
the important marketing tools for Chinese entrepreneurial firms. Chinese entrepreneurs use
the multiple benefits of SMM in their marketing activities. One of the most important
contributions of our study is demystifying Chinese entrepreneurs’ perceptions on social
media marketing. Themes were emerged with regard to their general understandings of
SMM, SMM strategies and practices and SMM challenges. First, consistent with previous
research (Durkin et al., 2013; Xu et al., 2019), we found that Chinese entrepreneurs deem
SMM a new essential tool for businesses. Contradicting to the previous study (Durkin et al.,
2013), however, Chinese entrepreneurs seem to have a purposeful or thoughtful agenda on
how to use SMM which reflects on their sophisticated social media strategies and practices.
Second, our findings suggest that Chinese entrepreneurs are taking full advantage of SMM
tools and enjoying multiple benefits of SMM. Those benefits include the possibility of
influence of individual stage of buying process, a greater understanding of customer
segments, a support of customer relationship building and maintaining, a cost-effective
marketing communication and a better connection with consumers through customized
JRME messages (Bonhomme, 2017; Whiting and Deshpande, 2016). We also found that Chinese
23,2 entrepreneurs consider flexibility and sensitivity are the two distinct characteristics that
differentiate entrepreneurs’ and traditional firms’ SMM. This finding largely echoed
previous research on general entrepreneurial marketing (Bocconcelli et al., 2018; Morrish
et al., 2010). Moreover, an interesting finding of our study is revealing the specific strategies
and tactics of WeChat marketing (Bonhomme, 2017; Hansen, 2020). While WeChat
382 marketing is similar to Facebook marketing on virtual relationship building (Andriole, 2010;
Dehghani and Tumer, 2015), and Twitter marketing on word-of-mouth communication
(Jansen et al., 2009; Jin and Phua, 2014), it differs from other types SMM in its integration of
individual and organizational account promotion, multi-layered social circle dissemination
and social messaging group marketing. Finally, another contribution of our study is
uncovering Chinese entrepreneurs’ perceived SMM challenges. Those challenges include
how to break the communication clutter and obtain consumers’ attention, how to transfer
social media connections into purchase and how to protect the information that associates
with the social media account.
Our study has both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, our findings
extend UGT to the context of business-oriented media usage. Specifically, our study reveals
that the two gratifications for Chinese entrepreneurs to use social media for marketing
purposes are flexibility and sensitivity. In addition, our findings expand previous literature
by enriching our theoretical understanding of entrepreneurial marketing in new social and
cultural contexts. Finally, our findings supplement previous research on social media
advertising by uncovering rich meanings of SMM from entrepreneurs’ emic perspective.
Practically, our findings offer some insights for entrepreneurs to better communicate and
connect with Chinese consumers using social media. First, our findings suggest that
entrepreneurial firms need to build a strong presence on social media. Entrepreneurial firms
may use multiple social media platforms to increase the social media exposure and reduce
the risk of overdependence on one platform. Second, entrepreneurial firms’ social media
promotional content and format should fit with social media characteristics to achieve
desirable outcomes. Third, if entrepreneurial firms use WeChat as their marketing tool, they
should take full advantage of integration of individual and organization accounts, multi-
layered social circle information dissemination and social messaging group marketing.
In summary, the unique contribution of our study is to reveal the specifics, nuances,
dynamics of SMM in the context of China from Chinese entrepreneurs’ emic perspective. Our
study paints a complete picture of why and how Chinese entrepreneurs engage with SMM to
achieve their business goals. Our study extends and enriches our theoretical understanding
and conceptual knowledge of UGT, the entrepreneurial marketing scholarship, and the
literature of social media marketing by generating both theoretical and practical insights.

Limitation and future research

Our study has some limitations. First, our study focuses on Chinese entrepreneurs’ general
understanding of SMM. Future research could investigate their interpretation of different
kinds of SMM or compare their perception of SMM to traditional media marketing to see
similarities and differences. Second, while our participants are diverse in terms of type, size
and length of businesses, our sample may not reflect the complicity and dynamicity of
Chinese entrepreneurs. Future research could recruit a more diverse sample to replicate the
current study. Third, our study discussed several factors that might influence the effect of
SMM as revealed by the interviewees. However, it did not measure the impact of those
factors. Future studies may conduct experiments to test the impact of those factors in terms
of persuasion and sales. Finally, the usage of SMM is developing very fast. We have already
seen some significant changes from our study compared to the previous literature. This is a Social media
field that the practice is much ahead of the research. We call more timely research to help us marketing
better understand the field.

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Corresponding author
Huan Chen can be contacted at: huanchen@jou.ufl.edu

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