Step by Step SWOT Analysis of WeChat – the Chinese All-in-One App

About WeChat

With a monthly user base of over 1 billion people, WeChat is China’s most popular messaging program. Tencent, a Chinese tech giant, owns it. It’s comparable to Facebook’s WhatsApp and Messenger, but it has a few more features, such as allowing users to perform everything from payments to reserving flights and hotels, along with mini-programs.  

Now that we know how big and important WeChat is and what SWOT analysis is, Let’s begin with the SWOT analysis of WeChat beginning with the two internal factors strength and weakness followed by the external factors, opportunities and threats.

Services Provided by WeChat

There are multiple services provided by WeChat under one app.

• Instant Messaging 
• Voice Messaging
• Social Media
• Mobile Payment Service

Competitors of WeChat:

WeChat faces intense competition from other players around the world. Some of its major competitors are listed below.

• Whatsapp
• Telegram 
• Hike
• Skype
• Line

SWOT Analysis of WeChat

It is a method of assessing a company’s competitive position and formulating strategic plans. Internal and external aspects, along with existing and future possibilities, are all evaluated in a SWOT analysis.

1. Strengths of WeChat

WeChat being the platform with the most number of users in China surely has its dominance on the market and strengths, which are:

• Accessibility – WeChat does not require you to have or ask for a phone number to register unlike many of its counterparts, giving it a huge advantage over them by providing ease of account setup. It simply requires a username and password
• Better Viewing Rate – Wechat is popular among marketers because messages sent to contacts on the app have a greater viewing rate.
• Special Features – ‘Mini program’ is an app within an app. WeChat has this feature due to which business owners can create mini-apps in the WeChat system.

• Large Distribution Network – WeChat has a significant number of outlets in practically every state, which is backed up by a powerful distribution network that ensures that its services are easily accessible to a large number of users.

2. Weakness of WeChat

The application and firm have quite a few weaknesses too, let’s understand them now:

• No Specific USP – Having so many features and uses the application has difficulty in defining its USP(Unique Selling Proposition) a particular position in the market that can be exploited by the competitors.  
• Lack of Privacy – Controversies that show the involvement of Chinese Authorities in monitoring individuals’ messages and shared content thus breaching privacy.
• Intense Competition – It is losing market share to new entrants in niche categories as they seem more detail-oriented and have singular services, unlike WeChat. 

WeChat needs to work on these two internal factors for maintaining their strengths and neutralizing or eliminating their weaknesses.

3. Opportunities of WeChat

There are many chances that any firm gets or makes for itself to expand, flourish and earn profits, goodwill or have some positive impact through it. Here are some opportunities for WeChat:   

• Creation of Large Customer Base – WeChat can have a much more global user base if they can get government permissions and tie-ups with international banks to support payments and businesses.
• New Taxation Rules – The new tax policy could have a significant impact on the way we do business and could open up new opportunities for existing players like WeChat to increase profitability.
• Shift to Digital World – The rise of e-commerce and social media marketing as a trend can become a great opportunity for WeChat if it can maintain a strong online presence across multiple social networking sites.

4. Threats of WeChat

Due to the ever-increasing awareness of users, the awareness about threats is also increasing rapidly which can affect WeChat exponentially if reassurance is not provided. Some of the threats to WeChat are:

• Misuse – Having a billion-person user base can also be a threat as when an app becomes commonplace for so many people the number of tries to exploit its loopholes and break WeChat rules without them knowing is soon becoming an industry-level skill.
• Lack of Visibility – The lack of visibility with WeChat content can lead to several risks that can lead to data breaches and hamper company operations.
• Privacy Breach – All content and information sent through WeChat are likely to be accessible to the Chinese government, even if the users are not Chinese and are situated outside China. This knowledge can make the users feel threatened thus in turn threatening WeChat’s user base.

Conclusion

WeChat is surely an effective app, with its multiple features and offerings under one app the company is attracting a large consumer base. It has strong visibility and is a market leader in China. The company should select a feature, develop it more than its other features to create a USP. 

The company needs to work on its privacy issues to make customers feel safe about their privacy. It can further expand itself in different countries other than China and increase its visibility.

WeChat can improve its visibility by using digital marketing – the new trend of Marketing. If you also want to learn about digital marketing, IIDE is the solution for you, it has world-class courses in digital marketing.

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