Investigation on the relationship between China’s social media and the purchases made on the e-Commerce platforms for better promotion strategies

This paper summarizes some observations from the temporal trends of the discussion volume in China’s social media against the actual purchase transactions made in China’s e-Commerce platforms such as Taobao and Tmall. Such temporal trends could be used as a reference for better promotion strategies in any industry, for example, beauty industry chosen in this study, and for any campaigns in specified festivals. The temporal trends in the Q1 of both 2012 and 2013 could help demonstrate the informal communication among peer customers, i.e. electronic word-of-mouth, as kind of their social media footprints for obviously supporting actual purchases made in the periods of Chinese New Year and the 3.8 Women’s Day in 2012 and 2013. Lastly, a hypothesis is set and tested that there is significant positive relationship between number of posts relevant to skin care topics in social media and actual purchases made in an e-Commerce platform in China.