Research On The Influence Factors Of User Engagement In WeChat Moments Advertising

In the increasingly commercialized market context,advertising is becoming the most important source of income for a type of mass media.Advertising can even be regarded as the crucial factor for the survival and development of the media.In the era of social media network,the advertising effects cannot be directly equated with the advertisements' exposure and pageview.Nowadays,the advertising objects of social media platforms have been transformed from “audience”——“passive information receiver” to “user”——“positive communication participants”.“User engagement” is considered as a highly valued concept and has gradually become the most meaningful indicator for measuring the effectiveness of social media advertising.The rise and widespread popularity of We Chat is a milestone revolution in the history of mobile social networks.As a mean of instant communication tool,We Chat has changed the way of people's interaction and people's lifestyle,bring its users walking into a new interactive space of fragmentation and immediacy.Statistics show that at the end of 2017,the usage rate of We Chat was up to 92.6%.Among all the functions of We Chat,the usage rate of We Chat Moments ranked first,up to 85.8%.The strong user volume of We Chat and the extensive penetration rate of We Chat Moments have gradually become the most competitive playing field for advertisers.We Chat Moments advertising has quickly attracted the interests of academic and industry since its birthday in 2015.Based on the strong theoretical significance and practical meaning of We Chat Moments advertising,this paper takes it as a research representative of social media advertising in this mobile Internet age.Through combing the relevant research literatures,there are only a few literatures analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of We Chat Moments advertisements,and predicting its future development trends.Few scholars have studied the communication mechanism,marketing model,user acceptance and advertising effects of We Chat Moments advertisements in the way of literature analysis and qualitative research.The quantitative research and empirical analysis are urgently required.This paper proposes hypotheses based on technology acceptance model,social learning/cognitive disorder theory,dual consistency theory,social dependence theory,and advertising avoidance model.Besides,this paper predicts multiple potential variables that may affect user engagement of We Chat Moments advertising and verify these variables through the statistics of survey.The empirical results show that “perceived usefulness”,“subjective norm”,“sociality”,“entertainment”,“psychological” and “consistency” positively affect user engagement of We Chat Moments advertising.The “user engagement attitude” has positive correlation with “user engagement behavior”,while “perceived ease of use” only positively affects “user engagement attitude”,and “perceived advertising clustering” only negatively affects “user engagement attitude”."Privacy" only negatively affects "user engagement behavior." It is worth mentioning that although “perceived target obstacles” negatively affects “user engagement attitude”,it is positively related to “user engagement behavior”.This phenomenon may be explained as a kind of subculture resistance when users feel they are losing their rights of control.Finally,the “user engagement attitude” positively affects the “user participation behavior”.To sum up,all the hypothetical factors in the research model have a relevant impact on user engagement,which need to be taken seriously.