With the rapid development of science and technology, Internet is becoming an indispensable tool in people’s life. People learn about what is happening around the world and understand market trends simultaneously by surfing the Internet. Therefore, many social network tools such as Weibo and Facebook play a key role in the market for both consumers and suppliers.
Recently in China, I found that there are more and more online stores own by young people, especially girls. They have their products’ photos taken, and then post them on his or her well-designed online homepage. To develop the promotions, the sellers set up an account on Weibo for the shop and follow many potential customers. Those online shop owners keep update the Weibo account by posting different kinds of goods and the link of homepage in order to attract more people. One of the most common ways for promoting is that sellers wrote a message on Weibo asking people to forward the ads. If people forward the ads, they will have a chance to win some prizes or discounts. For most people tweeting on Weibo, they get the chance for wining free goods just by forwarding ads, why not? For most advertisers, their ads are separated in a very short time, which helps them to increase sales. Plus, they just need to give some low-cost goods as prizes in return.
The simplicity and low cost are important advantages of this kind of advertising. Thousands of online shop sellers are using social network tools to promote their product because they saw the great result and good effect of it.
Additionally, conformity can be seen in these cases. When people see others forwarding the ads and saying that product is good, they are more willing to try the product.