SNA for Renren’s Expanding Market Share in China

SNA for Renren’s Expanding Market Share in China

Wen (Sabrina) Li

Exchange Blog Assignment

Background:

With 1.3 billion population, China has become one of the largest fast growing and emerging markets of social network. Since Chinese government banned the access to Facebook, the expanding of its market share in China has been impeded. Renren, formerly known as Xiaonei, a Chinese version social network site like Facebook, has seized the opportunity to take a leading position in China’s social network market and to satisfy the increasing demands for digital connection and social interaction among Chinese citizens. Renren is most popular amongst students and graduates to reconnect with real life old friends and classmates, and is now ranked as China’s second popular social network with 120 million registered users.

Question to be Discussed:

When Renren enjoys its dominating market position in China, it confronts other strong rivals like Qzone (most teens and rural users), Kaixin001 (white-collar and office workers), and 51.com (lower tier city users). Can Renren expand its market share and attract more users from occupational demographic and business field with high profession by adding more professional features and functions without compromising the potential popularity growth in students? To be specific, in order to attract more potential users and retain current ones, marketers need to collect as much information as possible about users’ preferences and personal data etc. in order to do precise and accurate analysis.

Objectives:

By conducting social network analysis and measuring the density, distance, degree, betweenness, and eigenvector, it helps us understand the relationship, the intensity of connections at different levels, and the distribution of users’ network amongst different groups of users. The SNA will deliver us clear messages about Renren’s potential for growth in diverse user markets, the effectiveness of the communication in Renren’s network, and what strategies Renren needs to consider to enhance the connections and to widen its business scope.

Attributes Needed: 

Age

Gender

Education Level

Occupation

Interests and Hobbies

Region

Major of Studying

Number of Social Network Joined other than Renren (Weibo, Kaixin001, Qzone, etc.)

Frequency of Use (seldom, sometimes, often, very often)

Purpose of Use (Entertainment, Self-fulfillment, Relationship Building, etc.)

Conclusion:

As Renren is one of the biggest market players in Chinese social network battle, its similar model as Facebook plus some of its unique features make Renren gain huge Chinese user base and more and more prospective users. In the intensive market with fast changing preference and increasing demand from users, Renren could take advantage of implementing SNA to have a understanding of current user market, therefore to better extend its target market from only students to mass market which ranging from lower tier of users to high tier ones.