An exploratory analysis of travel related we chat mini program usage affordance theory perspective
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This study analyzed WeChat mini program usage from an affordance theory perspective using data from 180 user comments on a question/answer website. Network analysis identified the top 150 words discussed and key nodes with high betweenness centrality. Results showed WeChat mini programs play an important role in China's tourism industry by providing necessary travel information and connecting users to services. The study applies affordance theory to understand mini programs as both affordance providers through their functions and as affordance sub-providers by extending usage through social interactions. This perspective differs from prior studies using technology acceptance models. Theoretical implications are discussing new technologies from this new lens while practical implications are the role mini programs play in potential tourism activities. Limitations include potential subjectivity from
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An exploratory analysis of travel related we chat mini program usage affordance theory perspective
- 1. An exploratory analysis of travel-related WeChat mini program usage: affordance theory perspective Ao Chenga , Gang Renb , Taeho Hongb , Kichan Namc , Chulmo Kooa a College of Hotel and Tourism Management, Kyung Hee University, South Korea b College of Business Administration, Pusan National University, South Korea c School of Business Administration Department of Marketing and Information Systems, American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)
- 2. ENTER2019 – Research Track 1. Introduction 2. Theoretical Background 2.1 WeChat and WeChat mini program 2.2 Affordance theory 3. Method 2.3 Data collection 2.4 Analysis method 4.Data Analysis & Results 5.Discussion & Conclusion
- 3. ENTER2019 – Research Track 1 Introduction
- 5. VARIOUS TYPES EASY TO HANDLE LOTS OF FUNCTIONS Book accommodation, transportation ticket, and tourist attraction ticket LOW FREQUENCY average of only 2.6 times per week and keep 45 percent of their users over a 90- day period HIGH DEVELOPMENT and MAINTENANCE COSTS e.g., Booking.com, Airbnb, C-trip TAKE UP LOTS OF PHONE MEMORY and STORAGE Travel Apps
- 6. MINI PROGRAM SINCE 2017 ADVANTAGES NO NEED TO INSTALL OR UNINSTALL TAKE “0” MOBILE STORAGEEmbedded in WeChat and do not take any mobile storage EASY ACCESSIBILITY WeChat users can access to the mini programs directly within the WeChat APP
- 7. 1 2 3 Few studies focus on the low usage frequency and high storage capacity of travel-related APPs. Most previous studies have been studied for general information systems design based on affordance and social media affordance. However, few papers explored in tourism WeChat mini program seemed a “revolutionary” innovation, however whose potentials have not been exploited CURRENT ISSUES ON THIS TOPIC
- 8. RQ 2 Dose WeChat mini program play a very important role in Chinese tourism activities? And, how it becomes so important? Beyond the tourism original functions, have tourism activities been more actively fulfilled through various tourism- related interactions within the WeChat mini programs? RQ 1 This study will investigate an exploratory analysis to test how the affordance theory could fit into the WeChat mini programs among Chinese traveller network from the users’ perspective.
- 9. ENTER2019 – Research Track 2. Theoretical Background • WeChat and WeChat mini program • Affordance theory
- 10. Launched by Tencent in 2011 INSTANT MESSAGING SERVICES COVERED MORE THAN 94% OF SMARTPHONES IN CHINA ACTIVE USERS REACHED 806 MILLION IN THE 2nd QUATERR OF 2016 WeChat and WeChat Mini Program OTHER FUNCTIONS: PAYMENT SERVICE, HOTEL RESERVATION, FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, HOSPITAL REGISTRATION…
- 11. 1 million MINI PROGRAMS 400 millionUSERS 4 times perday WECHAT USER OPENS MINI PROGRAMS 54% ACTIVE ACCESS WeChat Mini Program Released in 2017 WeChat and WeChat Mini Program
- 12. ENTER2019 – Research Track WeChat and WeChat Mini Program WeChat Mini Program
- 13. ENTER2019 – Research Track coffee cup pouring popcorn decorating weapon coffee container PERCEIVED AFFORDANCE S : people using the coffee cup for different purposes REAL AFFORDANCE Affordance theory explained that the perception could be caused by not only object itself and spatial relationships but also in terms of an interaction with the object by “action (affordances)” (Gibson, 1977). Norman (1988) argued that affordance provided by an object should be regarded as “real affordance” and “perceived affordance”. Hutchby (2001) took the concept of affordance to technology and studied the functional aspects of affordance as possibilities for an action. Cabiddu, De Carlo, & Piccoli (2014) studied the affordance of social media and identified three distinctive social media affordances. Affordance Theory
- 14. ENTER2019 – Research Track Affordance Theory WeChat mini program in tourism activities:based on affordance theory WeChat (affordance provider): essentially an instant messaging tool. However, it provides a lot of other embedded functions WeChat mini program: an affordance offered by WeChat; however, also extended to other purposes by the interaction between Chinese social networks, which can be considered as an affordance sub-provider. (provides a platform for enterprises; offers a channel for WeChat users…) Mini programs can provide an intermediary function in travel, simplifying unnecessary processes from the travel processes. Affordance Provider Affordance Sub-provider
- 15. ENTER2019 – Research Track 3. Methods • Data collection • Analysis method
- 16. ENTER2019 – Research Track Data collection Data collection method: text crawling Process: Crawled the posts on the topic of “how do you perceive travel related WeChat mini program after using it” on Zhihu.com. ※ Zhihu.com: a popular question and answer website where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by the community of its users Samples: 180 posts were used in analysis after data cleaning Fig. Zhihu.com
- 17. ENTER2019 – Research Track Analysis Method Analysis method: network analysis by using R studio program • Network analysis approach is a proper method for conducting a social network analysis of posts related to the usage of WeChat mini programs. • Network analysis method is constructed by calculating the betweenness centrality of each node • This study adopted the betweenness centrality to calculate the network centralization index
- 18. ENTER2019 – Research Track 4 Data Analysis & Results
- 19. Top 150 words qq calendar reading fast future startup ecology technology install demand appropriate chance delivery moment no need produce chat system development Tencent convenient visiting card related ability offline associated take-out food Ctrip operation download authentication business attraction program development time auditing formal CPU easy phone group subscribe Mini-game open query information exchange rate latest developer tour view calculator movie payment internet venture capital investment website customized choose company money management bicycle name game message field traffic shopping social contact QR code improve food education recommend share articles dictionary media promotion tool connect image release issue experience remind flight cost mode scene food and beverage travel agency news data industry automobile register official support hotel add Didi Chuxing consumption electronic commerce corporate magazine click online video search travel guide edition focus on marketing flow train ticket emotion bonus reservation public scan the code manage space page develop scan solve travel aid function restaurant introduce friends content trip review push shopping mall life service precise flight ticket customer merchant app goal brand gain market program Data Analysis ANALYSIS STEPS Step 1: word segmentation process for the collected Chinese-written comments using the “jiebaR” package in R programming language Step 2: network analysis was implemented using “igraph” package in R to find the relationship among the terms of the reviews Step 3: The top 150 words were extracted to interpret the importance of WeChat mini programs through visualization
- 20. Network visualization Travellers’ suggestions & their expectations for the development of WeChat mini programs Provide travellers with demand on necessary information in trips Key functions of the mini programs for travellers Analysis Result Key nodes:The nodes whose betweenness centrality was greater than 500
- 21. ENTER2019 – Research Track 5 Discussion & Conclusion
- 22. An open platfor m should connect users and service s provide rs conveni ences Affordance theory applied in WeChat Mini Program sharing connect ing …. WeChat mini programs have been showing the important role of the tourism industry and create potential tourism activities Practical Implications
- 23. Theoretical Implications Use of new technology from a new perspective •Most of the previous researches approached with using technology acceptance model (TAM) & the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT). •However ， this study attempted to explore the acceptance by affordance theory, which jumped out of the theory about adoption. ENTER2019 – Research Track
- 24. ENTER2019 – Research Track The object of analysis is the 180 comments written by users who have experienced travel related WeChat mini programs, the results could be very subjective and biased. Thus, future study can be continued on the basis of a large volume of the dataset. Limitation
- 25. Thank You! ENTER2019 – Research Track Q & A
Editor's Notes
- Hi, everyone. It is my honor to be here to present our work. My name is Cheng Ao, as you can see here. I am Chinese and now study in Kyung Hee University, South Korea. So, let’s go to the presentation. The title of this paper is “An exploratory analysis of travel-related WeChat mini program usage: affordance theory perspective”.
- The paper is composed of introduction, theoretical background, method, data analysis and results, and Discussion and conclusion.
- The first part is introduction part.
- With the increasing popularity of smartphones, tourists are widely using mobile applications to book accommodation, transportation ticket, and tourist attraction ticket and so on. In the mobile Apps market, travel-related Apps ranked seventh in the most popular category of being downloaded. As stated by TripAdvisor, 60 percent smartphone users have downloaded travel APPs and 45 percent of those individual users plan to use APPs to design their trips. Especially，Chinese tourists are most likely to make bookings through mobile Apps.
- Why people likes to use tralve APPs to plan their trips? Of course travel apps do have some advantages. Because they are easy to handle, and there are various types of travel related apps, they provide almost everything that travelers need. However, as everybody knows that, travel-related apps are used at a low frequency, just like Airbnb. I registered Airbnb ID long time ago, I even worked in the Airbnb call center. But I only use it once or twice a year. And generally, development and maintenance costs are quite high (e.g., Booking.com, Airbnb, C-trip). Also, travel apps take up lots of phone memory and storage. As I wrote in our paper, the average Chinese travelers uses 20 travel APPs while traveling. So, in other words, we have to install 20 APPs for just one trip. And those APPs will stay in my phone until my next journey.
- In this situation, we thought of the wechat mini program. Wechat launched the mini program in 2017, wechat mini program dose not need to install or uninstall ; it is embedded in WeChat and do not take any mobile storage; Also, WeChat users can access to the mini programs directly within the WeChat. And latter, I will introduce what are wechat and wechat mini program.
- Let’s look at the previous studies. Previous researches studied smartphone APPs usage patterns, but not many studies focused on the low usage frequency and high storage capacity of travel-related APPs. Most related previous studies have been studied for general information systems design based on affordance and social media affordance. However, few papers explored in tourism context. Meanwhile, the WeChat mini program seemed a “revolutionary” innovation, however whose potentials have not yet been exploited so far.
- Therefore, based on these issues, we try to investigate how the affordance theory could fit into the WeChat mini programs among Chinese traveller network from the users’ perspective. To be specific, the first research question is that Dose WeChat mini programs play a very important role in Chinese tourism activities? And, how it becomes so important? The second research question is that beyond the tourism original functions, have tourism activities been more actively fulfilled through various tourism-related interactions within the WeChat mini programs?
- Let’s move to theoretical background part.
- Before wechat mini program, let us find out what is wechat. Essentially, wechat is a free application launched by Tencent in 2011, to provide instant messaging services for smart terminals. But, it also have so many other functions. Like social media, mobile payment, hotel reservation, financial management and so on. Wechat has Covered more than 94% of smartphones in China, Active users reached 806 million the second quarter of 2016.
- WeChat mini program was released in 2017, and the first batch of WeChat mini programs was officially launched. It is similar to general APPs but it has some advantages as I said before. Based on the latest report of Tencent, more than 1 million mini programs have been launched, the total number of users of mini programs has reached nearly 400 million, and the WeChat user opens mini programs 4 times per day, and 54% of those users are active access users.
- Let me show you how to access to wechat mini program. Here, we can see the mini program button, we click on this button and will go to the next step. We can search a mini program here, or you can find mini programs near to you. This list is the mini programs I have entered, it will keep in here. For example, it is c-trip mini program, I click on it, then I can come to the main page of c-trip mini program. I can book hotel, air ticket, train ticket, rent a car, purchase attraction tickets and so forth.
- So that was introduction about wechat and wechat mini program. Now, let’s go to the theory part. We adopted affordance theory in our paper. Affordance theory explained that the perception could be caused by not only object itself and spatial relationships but also in terms of an interaction with the object by “action (affordances)” (Gibson, 1977). Norman (1988) argued that affordance provided by an object should be regarded as “real affordance” and “perceived affordance”. Hutchby (2001) took the concept of affordance to technology and studied the functional aspects of affordance as possibilities for an action. Cabiddu, De Carlo, & Piccoli (2014) studied the affordance of social media and identified three distinctive social media affordances. In this paper, we took the concept of real affordance and perceived affordance argued by Norman. For example, A coffee cup, could provide a function for pouring coffee, pouring popcorn, decorating, and even being a weapon. All of those kinds of functions can be considered as perceived affordances while people using the coffee cup for different purposes. However, it does not change the real affordance of a coffee cup that is a coffee container
- Therefore, WeChat, it can be considered as the affordance provider, WeChat mini program can be seen as an affordance offered by WeChat. However, WeChat mini program has been extended to other purposes by the interaction between Chinese social networks, which can be considered as an affordance sub-provider, provides a platform for enterprises; offers a channel for WeChat users. The mini programs can provide an intermediary function in travel, simplifying unnecessary processes from the travel processes.
- The third part is method part.
- We collected data from zhihu.com, a popular question and answer website where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by the community of its users. We searched a topic of “how do you perceive travel related WeChat mini program after using it” and collected 200 posts and 180 posts were analysed after data cleaning.
- And network analysis was conducted by using R. Network analysis method is constructed by calculating the betweenness centrality of each node, and this study adopted the betweenness centrality to calculate the network centralization index
- The next part is data analysis and results.
- The analysis process can be separated into 3 steps. Step 1: we segment the words with using “jiebaR” package in R, and then network analysis was implemented using “igraph” package in R to find the relationship among the terms of the reviews. Step 3: The top 150 words were extracted to interpret the importance of WeChat mini programs through visualization.
- The three clusters were obtained based on a walktrap algorithm proposed by Pons and Latapy (2006). It is an algorithm by computing communities in large networks using random walks. And the red block means the key nodes. According to the algorithm, the nodes whose betweenness centrality was greater than 500, were labelled as key nodes with larger font size. The green cluster is the key functions provided by trave-related mini programs The blue one represents that travel-related mini programs provide travellers with on demand necessary information in trip. The purple cluster refers to the suggestions and expectations from travellers.
- The last part is discussion and conclusion.
- WeChat, the “real affordance” of mini programs is that an open platform should connect users and services providers. At the same time, from different perspectives, “perceived affordances” would be slightly different. （conveniences，connecting，sharing）
- Theoretical Implications. This paper is based on the use of new technology. Regarding the acceptance and use of new technologies, most of the previous researches approached with using technology acceptance model (TAM) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT). This study attempted to explore the acceptance and use of new technology from a new perspective, which jumped out of the theory about adoption.