WeChat, developed by Tencent Holdings, is a company founded in 1998(1) specializing in Internet and mobile services as well as online advertising. Tencent corporation started with its messenger service under the name OICQ which is a cross-platform of Instant Messaging and Voice message that they named later QQ. (2)

To develop the company, even tough Tencent encountered a significant growth with QQ, they lagged behind other different players in the Technology of Communication and Information in term of profitability. Consequently, the strategy was to expand and diversify their offer in new areas, such as the development of its own search engine “Soso” (3) by the year 2000 as well as the licensing of online games like Dungeon Fighter. However, the company has bloomed by 2011 when the company under Ma Hua Teng its founder, has introduced Wei Xin (微信) WeChat in English into the Chinese market landscape as well as with the acquisition of Riot Games.

Since the induction of WeChat, Tencent became responsible of the biggest social media and massaging apps including QQ, WeChat, and Qzone in China. (4) Tencent have not stopped here but has developed in parallel its own digital assistant named Xiaowei,(5) which as same as Alexa from Amazon or M.Really for Facebook is able to answer query about divers subject. Today, Tencent’s apps and web services in mainland China, is ostensibly endless, spanning strategic activities like TenPay(6) mobile payment system, or even cloud storage service namely Weiyun(7) to concurrence Amazon and Apple Cloud along with its own movie studio, Tencent Pictures.

Introduced in 2011, Weixin or WeChat has over the years increasingly help the lives of the entire Chinese population(8) with cutting edge technology like artificial intelligence, virtual reality and innovative features. Seen as the most used Chinese communications and social platform which include instant messaging and social entertainment that bring a mobile digital way of life on an easy and friendly use app. WeChat users get to be engaged within a real-time communication via free text and interactive messages as well as voice message, videos calls, and a platform called moments to post their photos.

The app under the Penguin logo constantly strive to meet user’s needs, it also propose Official Account for individuals and enterprises to share original content and cater services on WeChat platform which are the WeChat Mini Programs(9) enabling to connect service providers with the WeChat users and all these actions within one app, the users do not need any more to be drown by many different apps.

WeChat counts around 1,2 billion monthly active users(10), since it has expanded as a connector and initiates different services into multidisciplinary industries connecting users with one another as well as businesses from diverse scope through mobile phone.

Contextually, on how WeChat has gained the sympathy of million users, we would need to go back when internet companies in China as switch their strategy from PC oriented to Mobile internet Orientation(11) which has bloomed with the launch of the iPhone 4 but as well as the development of low-cost smart phone from tier Chinese company(12) but not only, it is important that by the year 2004, Tencent was one of the first online platform to sell virtual goods in China and beneficiate from the emergence of Social Medias.(13)

The first type is Instant Messaging and video platforms having the largest user base counting for half a billion users respectively.

The second type include microblogs and blogs organized as a social networking service provider under the name Q-zone a Tencent’s branch.

The third one is mobile social and e-commerce which had gained during the past decades a real boom in China due to its cost effectiveness and convenience.

In 2013, online transaction averaged 1850 billion RMB, representing almost 8% of total retail sales. (15) At that time, the value of mobile shopping in China reached a total of 168 billion RMD, either a 9% representation of the total online shopping market. (16)

From this point, Tencent who has already launched WeChat saw an opportunity to combine within one app a lifestyle that could tackle its main competitor Alibaba seen as the market leader with a majority of market share in customer to customer and business to customer(17) as the company could not only rely on QQ to sustain the growth and needed an creative app to tap into the mobile internet market. However, before being the app to have for many worldwide brands and e-commerce partners to be present in, WeChat went through different stages.

At his early creation in 2011, it was mostly an instant messaging-based app on IOS or Android over the time different features have been deployed to rend the user’s life easier by interacting with them and collecting key information to update WeChat according to the user’s needs. (18) At first glance; the app aimed to connect and make people together, nevertheless as Tencent has witnessed the evolution of E-commerce and mobile internet era surpassing the use of PC to purchase online as well as the change in consumerism, they have in August 2013 (19) added a number of functions like Voice and Video Call and previously in 2012 Circle friends to share contents, to penetrate a new market they introduce for retailer an official account where individuals as enterprises could create an account to propose their products as services which was free of charge. (20)

Within the same year of 2013, to overcome the fact that so far, all Wechat’s functions were on a freemium business model basis and was relying mostly on the QQ premium users fees (21) , where users would bind their account to WeChat or through their paid games business model and even through the paid stickers services on WeChat which is popular in Asia to generate revenues. (22)

WeChat business model has evolved into a model oriented for profit with new features including, WeChat pay 微信支付, Express Store, Game Center. Throughout these new features, especially with the extension of WeChat pay which used to be at the very beginning limited to in-game payments that evolved into a universal payment tool, WeChat has seen a number of registered users outside of China reaching 100 million and has been praised in China as the app, to absolutely have on his phone to sustain in the Chinese ecosystem. (23)

The diverse strategy of WeChat through its outstanding instant messaging and all its features around communication, has tackled many in the Social Media and Communication field such as Millet, Sina Microblog to cite few. WeChat by launching open account for sellers and individuals, threaten the giant Alibaba pioneer in meeting sellers and buyers through its intuitive platform Taobao.(24)

Consequently, most of the stores under the pavilion of Alibaba, opened a WeChat public account to promote their products to the vast WeChat users. To do so, since WeChat has had its own payment platform in its app since august 2013, stores owners would just need to connect their bank accounts to the app to start doing business through scanning QR codes for transactions and payments. (25)

Since Tencent through the implementation of QR codes for WeChat payment present in over 1 million offline and online stores, buyers as sellers who have met on Taobao can skip online payment platform on Taobao but simply doing business via WeChat QR codes within the app stores where the sellers is hosted. Which has caused some turmoil to Alibaba, that in response has tried to undertake some actions with its own payment methods “Laiwang” (26) following with “Alipay Wallet” in complement to “Alipay” having the same features of WeChat QR codes payment methods. Alibaba's strategy to counterattack WeChat was also to blocking, transactions of Taobao ’stores through WeChat app. But all these action were in vain as WeChat users increasingly choose the app to open an account versus Alipay Wallet service.(27)

By January 2014, to over compete Alibaba and its payment methods released in 2013, Tencent has developed for WeChat app the “Red envelope” function to celebrate the Chinese New Year(28), which is traditionally handover physically to close friends, employers to employees and most of it, to family members. To make WeChat as the App to have, Red Envelope has been launched on the Eve of the Spring Festival to become an instant hit. To do so, the WeChat users would have to use the Red Envelope function, bind its bank account to WeChat mobile wallets. (29) That enabled it to entice new users and consolidate the existing user.

As to be and remain on the veil in order to keep user’s attention, WeChat has expanded some functions such as, the “Didi Dache”(30) which has been added to WeChat products the same year, allowing the users through the app, to benefit from a taxi service offer. The idea was to connect “city taxi companies” to users having more or less the same functionality of Uber. Consequently, a rate according to the sum paid for the transaction is redistributed to WeChat enabling it to generate extra revenue through this service. (31) In the meanwhile, further services from different scope were penetrated that same year navigating with the same revenue generation model.

Among these services, we find WeChat electricity bills which enable users to pay their bill by scanning their QR codes in some stores like, Family Mart, Lawson or 7 Eleven (32) or WeChat Hotel, Medical among many others. WeChat app enable to provide solutions for numerous industries such as healthcare, hotels, retail, department stores, restaurants, ticketing for cinema, express delivery, universities (E-Book), e-commerce, and people's livelihood. (33)(34)

Still in 2014, the “WeChat Smart Life” for industry wide solutions which is mainly related to the opening of public accounts to market products was introduced. This solution for business-oriented account, lies on the WeChat Public Number Identification,(35) which is important to have, as to register a business public account the user would need a Chinese business license or a partner from China, therefore, the identification number will be concatenate to the WeChat pay and will be use as to help traditional industries to transplant their business model within WeChat platform.(36)

From this point, we can consider the app as to enhance the user capability and usability through a software as a system that includes mobile e-commerce entrance, user identification, data analysis, payment and settlement, customer relationship maintenance, after-sales service and rights protection, and social promotion, revolutionizing the Internet mobile business solutions.

It will be between 2016 and 2018, that WeChat will start to develop their “mini program” allowing merchants and third parties to run their own applications through WeChat providing user stickiness and to broaden their services capabilities. The mini programs under the app has allowed WeChat to become a real commerce player with the possibility to create different account and selling approaches. (37) It is important to dissociate these accounts which are three distinct ones. We find the two most popular for sales are the subscription accounts, service accounts; the enterprise account is one of the three different accounts but aim for internal management while the two others are strongly linked to sales and marketing. (38)

The subscription account as well as the service one, will appear in the main chat feed of the WeChat user, both accounts send commercial messages to users but are limited in terms of quotas as Tencent orientation is not to become like Facebook which is somehow to disrupt users’ journey with a myriad of commercial but in the reverse for WeChat, it will be way more controlled. (39)

Regarding the subscription account, it aims to share information and content under the frame of one message per day, where this one can be re-shared by other account with mention to the original publisher which means that any time the user will be able to access the page of the publisher to discover more content it takes here the shape of a chain. The most frequent read account will always appear at the top of the subscription account on WeChat Subscription.(40) On the other hand, the service accounts provide a service or tool to customers which is somehow dedicated to one specific topic like for instance I.T magazine. Which will be able to have 4 push articles per month appearing, as a regular friend chat display. It will be important to point out that the subscription account article is more relevant than the service one in a way that they are customer centric based and not mass oriented.

To go back to the WeChat mini programs, it has been implemented to emphasize the vision of WeChat with “WeChat Smart Life” by linking the mini programs to business accounts including additional content for users, loyalty programs and transactions. Throughout the mini programs, users can explore and buy products without downloading the brands apps or being redirected to another website, which help users to gain time through the efficiency as well as effectiveness of this WeChat features.(41)

The mini programs have created a new way of doing business which cover over 200 industries accounting for over 1 million mini programs in 2019. The features and services of mini programs are the following: (42)

Scan-and-go: Here users can use any retailer’s mini program to scan products and checkout without waiting in line as Amazon goes. Moreover, with the omnichannel experiences, mini programs enable users to purchase online and pick up their products in store.

Group buying experience: Aim to offer a discount to shoppers If they can encourage their circle friends on WeChat to purchase the recommended items.

Social selling: Tend through users of the product on one of the mini programs to sell items from the brand X to their WeChat circle friends.

Key opinion leader sales: Within their WeChat moments feeds, influencers can promote by tagging one of the brands present in the mini program to lead user to the brand page and consequently, generate sales.

Unmanned stores: Retailers use mini programs to allow WeChat users to enter their physical store under the Easy-Go program which provide a QR code to enter the store and enable users to pay through their WeChat account with no cashier or staff. Every product is equipped with RFID tags that are scanned facilitating the customer journey.

The WeChat’s expansion illustrates since its launch, an increasingly dynamic approach to cover as much as possible broader scope, stepping up the pace of commercialization and opening up to various functions and features. That is translated through its diverse offering, providing users as well as partners connectivity capabilities while facilitating the transformation of enterprise users’ business models into mobile Internet.

WeChat has attracted big Chinese e-commerce players but also Global firms to its app with its features and particularly thanks to the WeChat mini programs where Global cosmetic, Fashion & Apparel, Electronic, Automotive company, (43) have their window to entice and go off the border to stay connect with their audience. Furthermore, existing shopping platform present at the very nascent of WeChat transition, playing a Key Role on the app’s development and coverage beside Alibaba, is Youzan(44)（有赞）which own millions of stores supporting WeChat payment and CRM analytical tool for business owner, which is somewhat the cash cow of WeChat draining traffic and generating the highest sales compare to name few but also present on WeChat like JingDong(45) (京东) a large platform where Tencent got 15% ownership having thanks to its scale and recognize as the most trusted platform in China allow, to WeChat to be a distinct player in the mobile internet commerce. Additionally, for any brands willing to do business on these two different platforms and use the WeChat window would need monthly or yearly to pay the equivalent of 5000 RMB as management maintenance fees.

To conclude, Tencent WeChat withdraws a rate for every transaction made from E-commerce platform revenues present on WeChat thanks to the app intuitiveness and its high scale as well as visibility, for those players it is a win-win situation. As for global brand being on WeChat Mini Program is somehow to comply with the digitization of the China’s path in term of consumerism as to raise brands awareness WeChat has become one of the marketplaces to be involved in throughout the traffic drained by the app which is about 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat mini programs has gathered different scope of business from entertainment, to travel agency (Qunar), E-commerce (foods, beverage, fashion, electronic) but also health care advice, culture and many more, which has attracted the most brands and players to invest and raise their brand equity through WeChat since Tencent has developed the tool that everyone in China need to live and for foreign brands to be appealing and increase their own visibility and market share in this huge market where competition is really fierce consequently this app is not to be avoided.