The Effect Of Content Marketing Through "We Media" On Customers’Online Interaction Propensity

With the rapid development, continually updated network technology and new media emerging in an endless stream, our ordinary people are turning to be content creators and content disseminators from just being content consumers by using "We Media" such as "Weibo" and "We chat" in China."We-media" becomes one of most popular on-line platform with its unique characters. It has numerous audiences, rapid speed of information dissemination and high interactivity. It opens a new chapter in marketing as it has shortened the distance between consumer and company. Now, even a small firm could contact a huge amount of target consumer with low-cost by using "We Media". More interactivities with consumers, more customer loyalty the company could win. Although "We Media" has opened up a new and high-effective way to spread information and interact with consumer, the final results still depend on the quality of the information. Content marketing is becoming more and more vital in an era which content is king. But till now, few studies have focused on content marketing and online interactivity between consumer and marketer.The author divided this study into two parts:exploratory research and empirical study. Based on the theory of Means-end Chain, this part of exploratory research aims at deeply digging up the reason people join in interaction online with company or marketer by constructing the chain of "attribute-benefit-value". The other part of this paper, empirical study, aims at exploring the effect of content marketing which include information content and entertainment content on customers’online interaction propensity.This paper contains six chapters. The first chapter is general introduction including background, significance and structure of the research. The second chapter is literature review of the researches on "We Media", content marketing, online interaction propensity, the perception of marketer and interpersonal skills. The third chapter implements the exploratory research and concludes this part of research. The fourth chapter proposes empirical research model and assumptions on the basis of literature review. The fifth chapter is research design and data analysis. The last chapter concludes the whole study, makes marketing recommendations and points out the limitations and future research directions.The results of exploratory research indicated:The attributes of content consumer enjoyed involve9aspects such as practical, updated, novel, interesting, unique, high quality, pertinent, emotional contact and knowledge-based. Trough these attributes, consumers want to gain14kinds of benefits and5types of values. The results of empirical study indicated:(1) content marketing have a positive impact on customers’ online interaction propensity (2) the mediate effect of the perception of marketer has been partly proved.