Hello, I am Sihui XIE, you can call me Claire for simplicity☺️ In my blogs, I will change my views about the digital marketing. Please feel free to communicate with me . I do hope to see your brilliant idea!
This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more.
Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.
Digital business model is a unique and special module, creatively delivering all the teaching materials and communication online and encouraging discussions and interactions via comments. Is it a time to farewell? Not exactly! It is a proper time for me to reflect the learning journey in the course.
Chinese educator Confucius has pointed out that “Learning without reflection is waste, while reflection without learning is dangerous”. In order to facilitate my reflection on the course, I will use Gibbs (1988)’s reflective cycle model.
Description: What happened?
Initially, I was attracted by the special teaching method: reading articles and interviews, sharing my own idea online and making a comment on my colleague’s posts. I choose this module because I would like to have deeper understanding of digital world. Besides, I also want to challenge myself as I have never tried to write a blog or create a video.
My learning progress on future learn
My first comment on “The We-media time is coming”
My second comment on “Is distance education fairer in the digital era for teachers?”
My third comment on “Language Learning in Digital Era: What makes Mobile language Learning Apps popular?”
My final comment on “Ocado – ‘the world’s largest dedicated online grocery retailer'”
Feeling: How do I feel and what am I thinking
My comments on “Restricting the Impact of Fake News” and “attitudes to failure differ across cultures”
Evaluation: the good and the bad of the experience?
Analysis: What can I made of it all?
Conclusion: What I have done else
The module help me manage my time more efficiently and strengthen my ability of self-learning.
Action plan: What should I improve next time
The majority of my comments are about my own ideas about a particular topics. The interaction with other students are not enough. Next time, I would like to carry out the discussion on the future learn, rather than just simply reply to others.
The following video will provide a brief idea how to apply what I learn in the module to career life in the future!
Gibbs, G. (1988). Learning by doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Oxford: Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic.
Can you believe that a live streamer can earn an income over $1000 during a single broadcast? According to Statista, the top streamers in China are able to earn more than a million dollars in one year. Since 2014, the live streaming industry has been booming and the market size is expected to reach around $16.5 billion. The live streaming mainly focus on the male market. The following blog will introduce the well-known live streaming organisations–YY Live.
People are surprised about the rapid development of YY Live. The leading live streaming platform has launched in Nasdaq in 2013 at $11.32, and its share prices increased to top at $135.37 on May 24th, 2018, and then decreased to $54.71 on 28th Feb 2020. However, the rapid growing company has a relative simple revenue model. Around 95% of YY Live’s revenue comes from viewers’ “tipping”. The donation is usually shown as a form of virtual “gifts”, which made by viewers when they feel satisfied with streaming show. Usually, the YY Live can share around 40% of the all donations from the viewers.
This tipping policy helps to consolidate the relationship between viewers and streamers. On the one hand, hosts intend to improve the broadcast contents to win more tips and attract more audiences. On the other hand, viewers and streamers can communicate immediately during the streaming show, and this help foster para-social interaction between the two parties. The viewers who have already made donations are more likely to come back again and made the another donation, namely frequent customers.
YY Live is one of the earliest and most successful live streaming platforms in China. YY Live ranks the top in terms of revenues from viewers’ tipping in 2018, more than double of the platform in the second place (Huya is subsidiary of YY Live). Hence, how can the YY Live stand out in the intensive competition among live streaming platforms?
Performance is the biggest section for almost every live streaming platforms, including the singing, dancing and chatting parts. YY Live features the music section. Firstly, YY Live promote the streaming singers to the mainstream social media and more audiences have the chance to know the singers. Secondly, YY Live also invite some musical celebrities to hold private concerts and musical talkshow. The celebrities already have considerable number of fans and some of they become new viewers of the platform. Further, the musical celebrities also help YY Live remove the label of vulgar music. In the music section, YY Live tries to systematically train the platform singers to become musical celebrities via online and offline integration. For example, Liu Yuning is a singers initially famous in live streaming platform and then come the public in TV show. He used to be the most profitable singers on the YY.
Gaming Section is the business expansion when the YY Music has been highly developed. With the function of voice communication and experience from foreign game live streaming platforms, the game business soon took off. Furthermore, YY Live is available both on apps and websites, which allows users move freely between PC and mobility with one account. Hence, the customer basis is enlarged and stabilised.
Online education is trend for future and YY Live regards it as the major driving factors for the future development. YY Live has seen the potential in the online education and plans to invest around 10 million RMB to develop the education department. YY Live has signed hundreds of teachers in order to meet future market demand. However, I think it is hard for YY Live transfer their existing customers to their education platforms becasue education and general entertainment segments target different viewers.
However, most game streaming platforms don’t get broadcast license from the game publishers. In this case, many game live streaming platforms were sued for infringement. In China, 9 out of 10 most popular game are published by the Tencent Game and co-operate with Tencent can perfectly solve the dilemma. In 2014, YY Live spun out of its game business alone as Huya and sold 34.6% of Huya’s share to Tencent at huge discount.
In addition to the benefit of license, Tencent can provide more resources to YY Live as Tencent is also the owner of the most influenced media-services platform, where most advertisement is display. With the help of Tencent Corporation, the YY Live can enjoy marketing benefits and promote the live streaming platform in the mainstream social media.
YY Live is the leading live streaming platform in China and tries to expand to rest of world. Performance streaming attracts more tips than any other categories in China but performance streaming is not prevalent in foreign countries. In 2019, YY Live become the biggest shareholder of the BIGO by acquisition, which focus on the international live streaming market. BIGO Live TV share the similar functions with YY Live. Viewers can watch live shows, make video/voice call and so on. YY Live tries to introduce the rest of world the new way of entertainment. At present, BIGO Live TV is one of most successful live streaming platform in some Southeast Asia, Middle East,Russia and South American countries.
1. Tianyi Gu.(2019). An introduction to the streaming market in China and How it differs from the west. Retrieved from: https://resources.newzoo.com/hubfs/Reports/Introduction_to_the_Chinese_Streaming_Market.pdf?
2. Lauren Hallanan.(2018). Top 5 Chinese Live Streaming Platforms You Need to Know in 2018. Retrieved from: https://medium.com/@laurenhallanan/top-5-chinese-live-streaming-platforms-you-need-to-know-in-2018-d963352124c7.
3. Cunningham, S., Craig, D., & Lv, J. (2019). China’s livestreaming industry: platforms, politics, and precarity. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 22(6), 719–736.
4. Y. Chen and F. Xiong.(2019). The Business Model of Live Streaming Entertainment Services in China and Associated Challenges for Key Stakeholders. In IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp. 116321-116327, 2019.
5. Daxue Consulting. (2019). Chinese Live Streaming Millionaires: Where does the wealth come from? Retrieved from: https://daxueconsulting.com/chinese-live-streaming-millionaires/.
6. Statista. (2019). Leading live streaming platforms by revenues from users’ donations in China in 2018 (in million US dollars). Retrieved from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033292/china-user-donations-major-live-streaming-platforms/
7. Statista. (2019). Monthly income of the leading live streaming hosts in China in September 2019 (in million yuan). Retrieved from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1081024/china-livestream-host-monthly-income/
8. Snowball Value. (2019). YY- growth at a cheap price. Retrieved from: https://snowballvalue.wordpress.com/2019/03/01/yy-growth-at-a-cheap-price/
Austin Li is one of the most popular streamers in China, holds live streaming sale program on the Taobao platform. He has made an unbroken record of realising 23,000 deals worth around $508,668 in his live stream section on March 7th. Another Chinese influencer Viya invited Kim Kardashian to her live stream platform and helped Kardashian to sell more than 15,000 bottles of perfume in just few minutes.
The booming of the live streaming in e-commerce industry has attracted thousands of Chinese social influencers to become live streamers on “Taobao Live” (Official live streaming platform of Alibaba Co., mainly used to promote the product). During the live streaming show, live streamers will display the product and share their own personal user experience. Customers come to see sale streaming and they make comments or ask some question about the sold items via bullet chat[i] at the same time. The live streamers will respond to some of questions in order to deliver valid information. If they are satisfied with the product, they can make a purchase directly on the Taobao.
The live streamers definitely re-define “influencer marketing”, which is one of the symbols of digital economics. As mentioned before, most live streamers are also social influencers, who owns more than millions of fans on social network. People are quite familiar with traditional influencers marketing: the corporation between brands and influencers. A popular way is to invite the influencers to make a video to promote the product, either by sharing their own experiences with the brand or just introducing the product in more detail . For example, the Emirates invited Casey Neistat to experience “the $21,000 first Class Airplane Seat”, and he recorded every aspect of the experience and uploaded to YouTube. This video was watched by more than 71 million people, and Casey has around 1.19 million followers .
Let’s consider the following question: How many of the 71 million viewers will finally become the potential customers of emirates and finally make a purchase of first-class ticket which is worth around $21,000? There is no doubt Neistat’s video help Emirates to establish a luxury brand image, but the conversion rate from YouTube viewers to Emirates customers is unclear. By contrast, the marketing method live streamers provided can tell the brands their ability to sell product, illustrated by the sales volumes after the live streaming section, and this advantage is considered as one of the one of main drivers of the booming online live stream sales. With sales figure, the collaboration between live streamers and brands consolidate. Long-term corporation might establish. Brands prefers to start corporation with live streamers rather than the mainstream celebrities to promote its product. On the one hand, brands pay less commission to the live streamers, but the sales are still guaranteed. On another hand, live streamers usually are more professional when make an endorsement, and they can widen audience and increase brand awareness.
As for viewers, live streamers provide better online shopping experience. Traditional e-commerce is always blamed for insufficient product information and poor product quality, as most online shops are private owned. Live streamers can help solve the problems. Firstly, real-time broadcast enabled viewers to get better understanding of items by the frequent interaction with the live streamers. Besides, live streamers are also internet celebrities, who live upon their reputation. Selling product with poor quality will lower down the credibility of the streamers. Finally, live streamers help stimulate customers to buy extra products. Some viewers expressed they always purchase items beyond their shopping lists. Some viewers even watch live streaming for entertainment without specific purposes. The “shoppertainment” (combination of shop and entertainment) is now the symbol and character the livestreaming industry.
In the future, live streamers will play an important role in the e-commerce industry because of their incredible ability to increase revenue. According to Wen Zhong, Senior Director of Taobao Content Ecology, said “Taobao Live has become a ‘standard configuration’ for ecommerce shops doing business on Taobao, rather than an “optional choice’.” The majority of the e-commerce platforms in China take the construction of live streaming platform as their business goal, because they see huge potential behind the industry. At present, most of live streamers are key option leader, who have influence on a certain industry. Austin Li and Viya are influencer in beauty industry and mainly sell related products. In the future, live streamers will expand their business areas from products in some categories to all categories item on the platform. Besides, the audiences of the live streamers are expected to change from the original followers on the social networks to all customers in the society.
China has already established matured Live streaming eco-system. Streamers first appear in the game industry, but the majority of top streamers (ranked by the donation they attain) are from the daily life section and entertainment channel in China. E-commerce shopping is only in the third place, and the popularity of education is followed after the five contents. Education industry is full of opportunities, market value of online education is expected to reach $77.95 billion in 2022, The benefit of economics scale encourages more students to choose online education. With technology advance, live streamers are able to deliver online courses, and this can enhance the education industry and profoundly change the way of studying in the following years.
1. Tianyi Gu(2019) An introduction to the streaming market in China and How it differs from the west. Available at: https://resources.newzoo.com/hubfs/Reports/Introduction_to_the_Chinese_Streaming_Market.pdf?(Accessed: 10 February 2020).
2. Statista(2019) Popular online streaming content types in China Q3 2019. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1082016/china-popular-online-streaming-content-types/ (Accessed: 10 February 2020).
3. Statista(2019) Market size of online education in China from 2012 to 2022 Available at:https://www.statista.com/statistics/1014491/china-market-size-of-online-education/ (Accessed: 9 February 2020).
4. Influencer Marketing Hub(2019) What is Influencer Marketing: An in Depth Look at Marketing’s Next Big Thing . Available at: https://influencermarketinghub.com/what-is-influencer-marketing/(Accessed: 9 February 2020).
5. Yu Zhiming(2019) 3 things to know about super-famous, lipstick-selling livestreamer Austin Li. Available at: http://www.timeoutshanghai.com/features/Blog-Shopping/66596/3-things-to-know-about-super-famous,-lipstick-selling-livestreamer-Austin-Li.html (Accessed: 9 February 2020).
6. Daxue Consulting (2019) How to do KOL marketing in China. Available at: https://daxueconsulting.com/https-daxueconsulting-com-kol-marketing-china-2019/ (Accessed: 11 February 2020).
7. Rebecca Sentence (2019) Why livestreaming is a major part of Singles Day 2019. Available at: https://econsultancy.com/why-livestreaming-major-part-singles-day-2019/ (Accessed: 11 February 2020).
8. Adina-Laura Achim(2019) Trends in Digital Marketing in China Available at: https://jingdaily.com/trends-in-digital-marketing-in-china/ (Accessed: 11 February 2020).
This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.
You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.
Why do this?
The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.
To help you get started, here are a few questions:
You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.
Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.
When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.
Claire' Blog