the consumer acceptance of different online...

The Consumer Acceptance of Different

Online Advertising Methods

Use the Chinese students in Sheffield as a case study

A study submitted in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Science in Information Systems

at

THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD

by

Xu Xu

September 2012

2 The Customer Acceptance of Different Online Advertising Methods

Abstract

______________________________________________________________

Background

With the rapid development in the fields of information technology and computer science, there

have been considerable changes to the methods used for spreading information. Similarly,

nowadays, Internet-based advertisement has become one of the most important advertisement

methods. As a result of these changes, different organizations and companies want to find the most

efficient way to advertise, which highlights the importance of online advertisements and the need

to accept different forms of online advertisement.

Aims

Principally, this dissertation investigates the different online advertising methods used by the

Chinese merchants in Sheffield, including Website, Email, Weibo, QQ, Renren, etc. This project

aims at finding the most effective ways of advertising online by using different methods. Data

collected can be used to analyze and develop a more extensive understating of the research focus

while also attempting to provide the answers to the research questions.

Methods

In its approach, this research mainly uses a combination of both quantitative and qualitative

research methods. There are four different types of data: websites statistics, membership

distribution statistics, questionnaire results and interviews results. Four different methods,

including website advertising, membership card advertising, questionnaire and interviews, will be

used to compare the different features of online and offline advertising.

Results

Different advertising methods have their own advantages and drawbacks. Customers usually

receive offline advertising more readily but it involves high financial costs. Online advertising

usually costs less and can have a high transmission speed.


Conclusions

This project concludes by providing several features and suggestions based on the analysis of the

research data and the advertising factors in the literature review section. Some of the most

important factors based on this research include the advertising budget, advertisement design,

marketing type, marketing target, and customer interaction. Furthermore, online advertising

represents the most effective way of advertisement with a relative low cost for the Chinese

merchants; Internet-based advertisements have prevailed over the research. However, a

relationship exists between the age of the students and the type of merchant when accepting

different advertising methods.


Acknowledgements

______________________________________________________________

I would like to take this opportunity to show my gratitude for having had the opportunity to

study for one year in such an outstanding department in the University of Sheffield. I also

want to heartily, and with great enthusiasm, thank my dissertation supervisor, Dr. Andrew

Madden from the Department of Information Studies. His valuable guidance and advice

during the course of my dissertation was greatly appreciated and this dissertation would not

have been finished without his encouragement and assistance. Meanwhile, I also wish to

acknowledge the financial and emotional support provided by my parents, who gave me the

courage and confidence to deal with all the difficulties. Furthermore, I would like to thank all

my friends who helped me and gave me valuable advice relating to this project. Additionally, I

also want to thank all the students who participated in this research because this project

would not have been possible without their voluntary participation.


Contents

______________________________________________________________

Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ 2

Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... 4

Contents ........................................................................................................................................... 5

List of figures ................................................................................................................................... 8

1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 9

1.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 9

1.2 Background ......................................................................................................................... 9

1.3 Aims & Objectives ............................................................................................................. 10

1.4 Research Questions ........................................................................................................... 10

1.5 Dissertation Structures ...................................................................................................... 11

1.5.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 11

1.5.2 Literature Review ................................................................................................. 11

1.5.3 Methodology ......................................................................................................... 12

1.5.4 Findings and Discussions ..................................................................................... 12

1.5.5 Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 12

1.5.6 References ............................................................................................................. 12

1.5.7 Appendix ............................................................................................................... 12

2 Literature Review .................................................................................................................... 13

2.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 13

2.2 Advertising Type ................................................................................................................ 13

2.2.1 Offline advertising ................................................................................................ 13

2.2.2 Online advertising ................................................................................................ 14

2.3 Advertising Acceptance ..................................................................................................... 14

2.4 Advertising Principles ........................................................................................................ 16

2.5.1 Advertising Costs .................................................................................................. 17


2.5.2 Advertising channel management ....................................................................... 17

2.5.3 Advertising design ................................................................................................ 18

2.5.4 Advertising Target ................................................................................................ 18

3 Methodology ............................................................................................................................ 20

3.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 20

3.2 Website ............................................................................................................................. 21

3.2.1 Preparing the websites ........................................................................................ 21

3.2.2 Building the website ............................................................................................. 22

3.2.3 Advising the website ............................................................................................ 22

3.2.4 Collecting the data ................................................................................................ 24

3.3 Membership Card .............................................................................................................. 25

3.4 Questionnaire .................................................................................................................... 27

3.4.1 Pilot Questionnaire ............................................................................................... 27

3.4.2 First Questionnaire ............................................................................................... 27

3.4.3 Second Questionnaire .......................................................................................... 28

3.5 Interviews .......................................................................................................................... 29

3.5.1 The first wave of interviews ................................................................................ 29

3.5.2 The second wave of interviews ........................................................................... 30

3.5.3 Additional merchants’ interviews ....................................................................... 30

3.6 Ethical issues ..................................................................................................................... 30

4 Findings and Discussions ........................................................................................................ 32

4.1 Website ............................................................................................................................. 32

4.1.1 The tendency of the website traffic ..................................................................... 32

4.1.2 The incoming sources of the website .................................................................. 34

4.2 Membership card .............................................................................................................. 35

4.3 Questionnaire & Interviews .............................................................................................. 37

4.3.1 First Questionnaire ............................................................................................... 37

4.3.2 Second Questionnaire .......................................................................................... 41

5 Conclusions .............................................................................................................................. 59

5.1 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 59


5.1.1 Depends on the advertising budget .................................................................... 59

5.1.2 Different service, different advertising strategy. ................................................ 59

5.1.3 Age and gender do matter. ................................................................................... 60

5.1.4 Word of mouth ...................................................................................................... 60

5.1.5 The design of the online advertising ................................................................... 60

5.1.6 Better interaction with customers. ..................................................................... 61

5.3 Limitations and lessons ..................................................................................................... 61

5.4 Suggestions for future work .............................................................................................. 62

6 References ................................................................................................................................ 63

7 Appendix .................................................................................................................................. 66

7.1 Website Pictures ................................................................................................................ 66

7.1.1 Website Picture ..................................................................................................... 66

7.1.2 Website Database Picture .................................................................................... 67

7.2 Membership Cards Information ........................................................................................ 68

7.3 Questionnaire Information ................................................................................................ 70

7.3.1 The First Questionnaire (Translation) ................................................................ 70

7.3.2 The Second Questionnaire (Translation) ............................................................ 72

7.4 Consent Form .................................................................................................................... 74

7.5 Information Sheet ............................................................................................................. 75

7.6 Leaflet Example ................................................................................................................. 77

7.6.1 Front side .............................................................................................................. 77

7.6.2 Back side ............................................................................................................... 78


List of figures

______________________________________________________________

[Figure 3.1 Tencent Analytics]

[Figure 3.2 SCSC Membership Card]

[Figure 4.1 The Page view of SCSC website]

[Figure 4.2 Total PV of each period]

[Figure 4.3 Average Increasing Number]

[Figure 4.4 Different Sources of Visiting SCSC website]


[Figure 4.6 The distributions of the membership cards in June & July]


[Figure 4.8 The gender of the participants]

[Figure 4.9 The age of the participants]

[Figure 4.10 Methods better for advertising]

[Figure 4.11 Agreeable methods]

[Figure 4.12 The combination results of Q3 & Q4]

[Figure 4.13 Which methods are more agreeable to you ]

[Figure 4.14 Online advertising is better than traditional advertising]


[Figure 4.16 The supporting rate of advertising methods]

[Figure 4.17 The comparison between Q3, Q4 and Q5]



[Figure 4.20 How often do you received different types advertisements]

[Figure 4.21 Leaflet Advertising Frequency]

[Figure 4.22 Advertising frequency of Email, QQ and Renren]

[Figure 4.23 Advertising frequency of Weibo and website]

[Figure 4.24 What do you think about the different types of advertisements]

[Figure 4.25 Leaflet advertising acceptance]

[Figure 4.26 Advertising acceptance of Email, QQ and Renren]

[Figure 4.27 Advertising acceptance of Weibo and website]

[Figure 4.28 Advertising Frequency & Acceptance]

[Figure 4.29 Where did you hear the services]



[Figure 7.1 SCSC Forum]

[Figure 7.2 SCSC Portal]

[Figure 7.3 Picture of Tencent Analytics System]

[Figure 7.4 SCSC membership card special offers]

[Figure 7.5 SCSC membership card design]


1 Introduction

______________________________________________________________

1.1 Introduction

In this chapter, the background of the current situation will be discussed. Furthermore, the

research aims and objectives will be mentioned with respect to the original research

questions. Additionally, the structure of the dissertation will be illustrated at the end of the

introduction chapter.

1.2 Background

Since there has been considerable development in information technology and computer

science, the methods used to spread information have changed dramatically. Presently,

Internet-based advertisement has become one of the most important advertisement

methods. It has become evident that there has been a decline in the influence and acceptance

of traditional advertisement methods, such as TV, radio and newspaper (Evans, 2008).

Consequently, different organizations and companies recognize the importance of

discovering the most efficient ways to advertise, the importance of online advertisements

and the acceptance of different forms of online advertisements.

According to Zeng (2009), there have been several different stages of development in the

history of advertising. Online advertising can be located in the modern advertising period,

where the theory of advertising comprises both information and marketing. With the

integration of the global economy and the technological revolution, the perspective of

advertising has been updated alongside the development of the worldwide economic

surroundings.


Marketing via the Internet began with the help of the "Ad server" in the 1990s (Zeng, 2009).

In recent years the scale of the World Wide Web has grown exponentially. According to Bai,

Low and Wen al. (2008), the Internet witnessed a higher ‘initial and continuing’ development

than the other medium. Zeng (2009) also argued that more and more consumers obtain their

information from online websites. Consequently, many merchants realized that the Internet

represents a very important method of advertising and spreading information online. In

addition, Ha (2008) argued that online advertising functions as an essential part of

advertising, which must be highly appreciated.

1.3 Aims & Objectives

In this research, Chinese students in Sheffield will be used as volunteers in the case study in

order to try to identify the features of different online advertising methods by comparing it

to one of the offline advertising methods. This will enable the discovery of the most efficient

way of online advertising in Sheffield, which might be similar to other areas as well.

The principle aim of this research is to discover the most effective methods of online

advertising by using different methods such as website advertising, online instant message

advertising, micro-blog advertising and social network advertising. Meanwhile, in order to

obtain more objective results from the research, offline advertising such as leaflet advertising

or loyalty cards advertising will also be carried out. After the actual implementation of these

different advertising methods, data can be collected and analyzed in order to find generate a

more extensive understating of the research focus and also try to find to the answers to the

research questions.

1.4 Research Questions

[Question 1]

What are the most effective methods of advertisement in terms of low cost for Chinese

merchants in Sheffield?


[Question 2]

Have Internet based advertisements prevailed over traditional methods, such as the printed

leaflet?

[Question 3]

When considering cost and efficiency, what is the best way for the Chinese merchants to

advertise in Sheffield?

[Question 4]

Is there a relationship between the students’ age and their acceptance of different methods

of spreading information?

[Question 5]

Will different types of merchants, such as catering services or travel agency, have a different

relationship with the acceptance of the different methods of spreading information?

1.5 Dissertation Structures

1.5.1 Introduction

In this chapter, the background of the current situation will be discussed. Furthermore, the

research aims and objectives will be mentioned with respect to the original research

questions. Additionally, the structure of the dissertation will be illustrated at the end of the

introduction chapter.

1.5.2 Literature Review

This chapter critically reviews previous literatures related to the different types of

advertising methods, including both offline advertising and online advertising. Various types

of publications and articles will be discussed and linked to this research. Additionally, the

fundamental principles of advertising will also be reviewed and used in the analysis of the

results.


1.5.3 Methodology

This chapter mainly outlines the different types of methodologies used in this research.

Meanwhile, the details of each advertising method carried out in this research will also be

examined.

1.5.4 Findings and Discussions

The findings and discussions are based on the data collected from the questionnaires,

interviews, websites and membership card distribution statistics. Various types of results

including results from the website database, questionnaires, interviews and membership

card distribution statistics will be presented and summarized in this section. Meanwhile, the

discussions will be presented after analysing the different types of result.

1.5.5 Conclusions

Conclusions will be made after examining the distribution and, subsequently, suggestions for

further work will also be discussed. This chapter will also illustrate the central points of the

findings and discussions chapter. Moreover, this section will also attempt to answer the

research questions.

1.5.6 References

All the citations used in this dissertation will be listed in this section.

1.5.7 Appendix

Various types of documents related to this research will be attached including an

introduction to the website and membership card, questionnaire, consent form, information

sheet and the questionnaires, etc.


2 Literature Review

_______________________________________________________________

2.1 Introduction

In this chapter, some key terms in this research will be clearly defined. It will also outline the

background of advertising. More importantly, previous literatures related to important

principles and factors of advertising，such as the fundamental principles of advertising will

also be reviewed and used in the analysis of the results. Various types of publications and

articles will be discussed and linked to this research with a specific focus on online

advertising and user acceptance.

2.2 Advertising Type

There are many methods to spilt advertising into different categories, in this research, offline

and online advertising are used as the two main category. The focus of this research is the

online advertising.

2.2.1 Offline advertising

As the traditional advertising method, offline advertising has existed for a long time in many

forms and customers easily recognize most of them.

A variety of opinions regarding offline advertising exist. To be specific, Cranor (2012) argued

that low CTRs show that online advertisements are not the most readily accepted

advertisement method. Consequently, some researchers still believe that, in contrast with

online advertising, traditional advertising methods function more effectively as an

advertising channel. Also, Goldfarb (2011) posited that it is much better for consumers to

receive a tangible item in their hand, like a newspaper or magazine, or they just will not have

the patient to examine all the details.


2.2.2 Online advertising

As a result of the diversification of the Internet, different types of online advertising have

emerged and been used in advertising. In particular, website advertising and email

advertising began earlier than social network advertising, or micro-blog advertising, etc.

According to Clow and Baack (2010), who are influential authors in the field of Integrated

Online Advertising, there are too many aspects to online advertising. However, with the

proper combination, it is possible to achieve better results in terms of accepting different

forms of advertisements for the enterprise. In addition, Merisavo (2007) stated that Mobile

Advertising represents an important feature of the online advertising industry. Zhao (2008)

also believed that advertising the web search, in some degree, can help display the certain

types of advertisements desired by web users.

Although there are lots of literatures related to online advertisement, only a small percentage

address the burgeoning method of advertisement evident in the social network and the

micro-blog. Furthermore, although Brainik & Gabrielli (2010) conducted a research that

analysed the communication channels between some types of media including the telephone,

face to face, email and paper, very little research has been conducted that compares the level

of acceptance towards the different forms of advertisement, including the burgeoning types

mentioned above. For example, the micro-blog has emerged as a new concept, which has

proved very popular with Internet Users. In the current environment of information sharing,

Twitter acts as the leading micro-blog services in lots of countries.

2.3 Advertising Acceptance

According to the five W’s theory posited by Harold Lasswell (1948), the acceptance of

advertising can be understood as “with what effects”. For example, Google started to use

contextually relevant and unobtrusive ads in order to earn more user acceptance. Lots of

website advertising can show different advertising based on the location of the Internet

users (location can be analyzed by considering the IP address of the Internet users)


It is also worth mentioning the important of the acceptance of online advertisements.

Bryman & Bell (2007) argued that the acceptance of the advertisements represents the key

measurement of the success of the advertising. Meanwhile, according to the research by

McCoy et al (2007), the traditional methods of advertisements are different from online

advertisements. Online advertisement requires new methods of evaluating the whole

effectiveness, such as the actual click through, not the view rate on the page of the website. If

the customers do not click through the web link, they will not find out more information

about the product, which means no acceptance. Moreover, according to Goldfarb (2011),

online advertisement has one main feature, namely ‘clicking-through rates (CTRs)’. The high

rates of CTRs mean a high exposure of advertisement towards consumers. In other words,

the acceptance of the advertisement is very important.

According to the research undertaken by Xuan (2011), it is important that consumers obtain

something they need through advertisements. Zeff and Aronson (2010) also argued that the

acceptance of online advertisements should not only be related to specific consumers, but to

their specific requirements. Consumers only find advertisement useful and unobtrusive

when they need the related information or services.

Ha (2008) adopted a neutral position in his study, which contains an argument relating to

the unforeseeable acceptance of online advertisements. However, practical research focusing

on the acceptance and attitudes of consumers toward online advertising remains very

limited. Kelly (2010) believed that the coverage of the current study did not contain much

information and that it was necessary to study the influence of social networks and

micro-blogs. However, the exact percentage of whether or not the customers will accept the

new emerging advertising methods remains unknown. Lewis (2010) argued that despite the

fact the media on the web continues to develop and lots of other forms of advertising have

been introduced, like social networks, little research has actually been conducted. Meanwhile,

Bai, Low and Wen al. (2008) argued that many consumers feel online advertisements are

more intrusive the other types of media, which hints at the espousal nature of online

advertisement.


2.4 Advertising Principles

Different advertising concepts have been introduced to advertising. For example, Professor

McCarty (1960) has introduced a concept named “marketing mix”, which includes four basic

elements: product, price, place, promotion. This four P’s are the key factors to the advertising,

which can be used to analyses advertising even at the current time. Compared with the 4Ps,

the 5Ws introduced by Harold Lasswell (1948) are released more early. The 5Ws consisted of

five different factors, including who, what was said, in which channel, to whom and with

what effects. The 5Ws has good definition of the nature of the advertising and is worth

considered to be part of the research.

Over the course of different historical periods, many different advertising principles have

been used. With the integration of the global economy and the technological revolution, the

principles were intimately connected with marketing management. Consequently, nowadays,

there are two prevailing principles behind modern advertising: the theories of information

and the theories of market management (Advertising Theory and Practice).

According to Goldfarb (2011), These two types of theories demonstrate the essential nature

of advertising, which is a form of communication used to sell goods or services. Theories of

spreading information placed greater emphasis on the communication methods, while the

theories of marketing management focus on selling goods and services (Merisavo,2007). To

be specific, theories of spreading information mainly include methods of choosing effective

advertising methods to obtained an increased advertising awareness with a relatively low

cost, which will help produce the ideal results (Evans, 2008). Meanwhile, marketing

management theories mainly concern methods of encouraging or persuading the customer

to take action on the goods or services. These theories aim to move the customers from an

awareness of the products or services to the links between the benefits of the products or

services and the customers’ personal values.

2.5 Advertising Factors


2.5.1 Advertising Costs

Most of the advertising is used to promote sales with costs. As one of the most important

factors in advertising, costs of the advertising have been used to measure whether the

advertising is effective or not. There are different views towards the advertising costs. Some

researchers argue that the more you put in advertising, the more reward you can get (Cranor,

2012). What’s more, some researchers also argue that the famous “long tail” is valid in the

online advertising. Because the sums of the unpopular products’ income are still big enough

to challenge the popular product, the advertising costs should be increased in order to satisfy

the needs of the unpopular. However, Lewis (2010) argued that the Pareto principle (80%-20%

rule) is more commonly seen in the online advertising. Consequently, the budget of online

advertising should be used in the 20% of the product which can bring most of the profit. In

this research, the costs of advertising will be used as a main factor to analysis the acceptance

of the online advertising.

2.5.2 Advertising channel management

Advertising channel management is one of the essential part of advertising thus it is

important to be considered. The third element of marketing mix, raised by Professor McCarty

(1960), is the distribution channels, which means that the choice of the proper channel to

advertise the product is one of the key factors in advertising. Consequently, analyzing the

features of the advertising channels and manage them in a reasonable way can enhance the

effectiveness of the advertising.

Different advertising methods have their own advantages and drawbacks. Choosing the

proper advertising methods will lead to more awareness of the products or services.

However, the channel itself has its own features; some of the advertising channels can be

managed and well controlled, for example, the leaflet advertising or the email advertising.

However, some of them cannot be managed or controlled, for example, the mouth to mouth

publicity advertising. The mouth to mouth advertising is one of the unpaid advertising

methods. It usually provides good effectiveness with minimum costs (Reiley, 2011).


2.5.3 Advertising design

Advertising design is a very important factor in advertising. According to Harold Lasswell

(1948), there are five Ws for the information spread, including who, says what, in which

channel, to whom, and with what effects. Since information spread is very important in

advertising. The design can be understood as “says what”, which represent the content of the

advertising. The content is the core in advertising, with the proper demonstration of the

product; the advertising can reflect the function and advantage of the product in order to

persuade the customers to buy. Meanwhile, Scott (2010) also argued that the advertising

should be properly arranged and well designed in order to gain the acceptance of the

customers.

The first element of marketing mix, raised by Professor McCarty (1960), is the actual product,

which means that the product is one of the key factors in advertising. Consequently, the

design of the advertising should introduce the product with detail information and detailed

presentation.

A good design should clearly show not only the key elements of the product, but also the

positive changes that the product can bring with a creative idea. According to Lewis (2010)’s

research, “guerrilla marketing” is a representative example of creative advertising. Cranor

(2012) also argued that although the creative idea is important, the unique style of the

advertisements is also needed to be kept as the signature of the advertisements. Brainik &

Gabrielli (2010) thought that without the clear style, the customer cannot easily identify and

memorize the brand of the advertising. McCoy et al (2007) thought that without the

invariable style of the advertisements, the release of the new advertisements would appear

to chop the small trees which had just been planted by the previous advertisements.

2.5.4 Advertising Target

Advertising Target is another important advertising factor. According to Bai, Low and Wen al.

(2008), the people who have been exposed to the advertisements are not always the


customer. The advertising audiences and the advertising target are not exactly the same.

McCoy et al (2007) also argue that by optimizing the advertising channel, the advertising

target can be as close as the advertising audience, which can make the advertising more

effective. Goldfarb (2011) believe that the advertising target have much influence on the

advertising acceptance.

There are a variety of methods to distinguish the target of advertising, for example: age,

gender, geographic location, etc. By the subdivision of the market target, the advertising can

be more specific in terms of target and effectiveness.


3 Methodology

_______________________________________________________________

3.1 Introduction

Research methodology refers to a science of studying how research is scientifically carried

out in order to solve the problem at hand (Kothari, 2004). Furthermore to adopt a

measureable and consistent methodology in the entire research is of paramount importance.

This section mainly describes the research methods and research approach utilised in this

research project.

A combination of both quantitative and qualitative research methods were primarily adopted

in this dissertation, as they can be applied in different types of research. Qualitative

research is typically regarded to involve research design, data collection and data analysis,

whereas quantitative research involves the creation of data in quantitative form with severe

quantitative analysis and rigidx fashion (Bryman, 2004). For instance, testing the number of

times people do something under certain situations. Meanwhile, the qualitative method

focuses on subjective evaluation of attitudes, perspectives and experience. For instance,

asking someone how they feel about a certain condition. According to Bell (2005), an ideal

and comprehensive research should attempt to mix both quantitative and qualitative

methodologies (Bell, 2005).

The research also employs both primary and secondary research. The primary research

generally includes four different data collection methods: website statistics, membership

card distribution statistics, questionnaires and feedback of the merchants. Meanwhile, the

secondary research generally utilises the previous data collected by other authors, which is

predominantly covered in the literature chapter. The customer behaviour varies from region


to region, and also might change as the time goes by. Consequently, secondary research will

not suffice single-handedly, thus the combination of both research tactics will be more fitting

in order to tackle this kind of research question.

Additionally, this research makes use of an inductive style of investigation, as it is also the

most appropriate for this nature of study. To be more specific, there are two types of research

approaches: deductive and inductive. A deductive approach begins with a perspective or

hypothesis, subsequently it tests whether the collected data supports or disproves it.

However, the inductive approach begins with a question or problem and subsequently it

investigates to distinguish what conclusions can be obtained from the data (Saunders et al,

2007). Since this research is based on the research questions, it mainly draws conclusions

from the research data collection and analysis.

Advertising research methods

In order to produce more effective advertisements, advertising research was conducted as

one special market research, to improve the efficiency of advertising. There are different

types of advertising research methods including pre-testing, campaign pre-testing and

post-testing (Scott, 2010). The methodology used in this research is based on the

post-testing. More information can be found in chapter 3.

3.2 Website

3.2.1 Preparing the websites

It was deemed as a proficient and low costs means to create a website with an accurate

statistic function in order to obtain a truthful reflection of the date of customer acceptance.

In this research, the Chinese students in Sheffield will be the main target group, consequently,

building a website which contains information they might be interested in would be a useful

way in which to begin this project.


The preparation of the website includes several different stages. To be more specific, the first

stage is the analysis of the information needs of current Chinese students in Sheffield. After

conversing with some friends in Sheffield, the decision to make an online forum had been

made. The second stage is to name the website and buy the domain name of the website. In

order to meet the needs of these students, the Sheffield Chinese student Club (SCSC) had

been used as the name of the website and the relevant domain had been bought. The third

stage is to buy the online storage space for the website. Since the main target group is the

Chinese students in Sheffield, online storage in Hong Kong had been chosen for a decent

price and better connection speed. Most work of the website preparation had already been

completed before the beginning of May.

3.2.2 Building the website

The first stage of building this website was to set up the basic

framework for it. After careful consideration, Discuz had been

selected as the medium, because it is a widely used and well

accepted website assistance system. The second stage is to customise this system in order to

meet the needs of the website target group. The website customisation comprises several

different parts, such as the design of different sections of the website and the arrangement of

different sections. The third stage includes classifying the needs of the information by

starting to write some relevant posts for the content of the websites. Meanwhile, the main

catalogue of the website and the lots of relevant posts are posted online. The fifth stage is to

carry out a small scale of private tests on some of my friends and update the website based

on the feedback obtained from them.

3.2.3 Advising the website

There are six different phases utilised in the advertising schedule in order to obtain

reasonable data from various advertising methods. Only one advertising method was utilised

in each phase, which lasted 10 days. The entire advertising campaign lasts 50 days, from

10th June to 29th July 2012. The advertising methods utilised in recommending the website


were offline leaflets, micro blogs (Weibo), online instant messages (QQ), social networks

(Renren) and websites. The methods mentioned above are the main advertising methods

used by the Chinese merchants in Sheffield. The details of these methods are as follows:

Offline leaflet

Offline leaflets are one of the most traditional manners in which to advertise. The SCSC

website and the SCSC membership club agreed to co-operate and shared the leaflet. The

design process of the leaflet began on the 28th May and the printing took place from the

2nd until the 8th June 2012 and the number of the first version leaflets printed was 2 000.

After some negotiations with other merchants took place, they agreed to offer a discount of

different shops or restaurants for the membership card holder. Subsequently, the second

version of the leaflet was printed on 20th June and the number of leaflets is 5 000. The

distribution began shortly after the completion of the second leaflet version. By distribution

of the leaflet, the website can gain more direct access and the relevant statistics can be

collected.

Micro blog (Weibo)

The micro blog is a new product that is based on the high

speed development of the Internet. One of the more famous

micro blogs is Twitter; however, the most famous to the

Chinese is Sina Weibo. Moreover, Weibo is very popular with the Chinese students in

Sheffield. The website can be well broadcasted by utilising this method. The access of the

SCSC website from Weibo can be classified into indirect access.

Online instant Message (QQ)

Online instant messaging (IM) is a new way for people to

communicate online quickly without extra costs. Skype and

Windows live messenger are the popular IM software in the

UK; however, QQ is the most popular IM software in China. Likewise, the Chinese students in

Sheffield utilise QQ a great deal and some Chinese merchants already started broadcasting


their business with QQ. In this research, the SCSC website is also advertised by means of

utilising QQ. For example, the most active internet users tend to communicate online through

QQ. Distributing advertising messages through QQ will cause some of these active users to

visit the SCSC website.

Social networks (Renren)

Social networks are incredibly trendy among university

students, who can share their status, post their photos, chats

with their friends, and so on. Probably one of the most

well-known social media platforms known to the West is Facebook and there are scores of

companies that have been publicised by Facebook. Similarly, there are also many companies

in China who advertise their business through Renren, which is the most popular social

network website in China. In this research, the SCSC can advertise some information through

Renren, and the indirect access that Renren brings to the SCSC website can be collected and

analysed.

Websites

The remarkable development of the internet has enabled a

large number of websites to share friendly links and

advertisements for other websites. Perhaps the

advertisements on other websites are more direct and effective, because the internet users

are already surfing the internet, thus making it is easier for them to visit these other

websites that they may be interested in, rather than by seeing the website advertised on

leaflet or by some other way. In this research, it was selected to do the majority of

advertisements through Taisha (www.taisha.org), which is one of the most popular website

among the oversea students. Similarly, the indirect access that the other websites bring to

SCSC can also be collected and subsequently analysed.

3.2.4 Collecting the data

The website has its own built-in analysis system interface


and by linking this interface with a professional analysis system named ‘Tencent Analytics’

(http://ta.qq.com), the statistics of the website, such as the website traffic, will be easily

monitored. This system also contains several different functions, which enables the diversity

of the data. The data from 10th June to 30th July was collected for analysis with “Tencent

Analytics”.

Tencent Analytics (TA) comprises several built-in functions, which can be utilised to collect

data. For example, the function named ‘traffic analysis’ can be utilised to distinguish the

different types of incoming traffic, including direct access, outside links and search engines.

Direct access is mainly brought by the offline advertising methods, such as leaflets. Indirect

access can be divided into different sources, such as Weibo, QQ, and Renren

Furthermore, there is another crucial TA function named ‘website tendency’, which can

demonstrates the tendency of the website visitor. By accurately analysing this data, some

arguments can be drawn in order to answer the research questions.

[Figure 3.1 Tencent Analytics]

3.3 Membership Card

The SCSC membership card can bring real benefits to the card holder and functions as an


attractive extra of the website. There is a great deal of benefits to be gained from

possessing this card. Firstly, the card holders can enjoy a certain discount in more than 30

restaurants and supermarkets. Secondly, the card holders can enjoy a discount in some of the

popular services, such as educational consultancy, property renting, travel agency, etc.

Thirdly, the cardholders can enjoy a free 1000 online points of the SCSC forum, which can

enable more access to the information of the website. The detailed information can be

reviewed in the appendix

[Figure 3.2 SCSC Membership Card]

The development membership card comprised of several stages. The first stage is card

planning and during this stage, some discussion with Chinese students took place and the

aim and purpose of the membership card was confirmed. The second stage is the making of

the cards. In order to reflect the cultural image of China, the card utilises the golden dragon

as the main theme. Meanwhile, in order to reduce the printing costs, I chose to print these

cards in China and had them shipped to the UK, and they arrived in the UK on 15th May 2012.

The third stage entails adding card values. During this stage, negotiations with the Sheffield

local merchants, especially the Chinese merchants took place and more and more merchants

agreed to offer a discount to the SCSC card holder. The fourth stage entails advertising and

distributing the cards. To be specific, the first approach was the online advertising method,

which contains Weibo, QQ, Renren and other websites, which is similar with section 3.2. The

secondary approach was the offline advertising method, which is the leaflet form of

advertising and that was explained later.


The SCSC membership cards were well welcomed by the Chinese students, and thus the

popularity of these membership cards made the process of finding participants much easier.

Meanwhile, the two different advertising methods of the membership cards also generated

statistics, which were used to analyse the research questions. More particularly, there are

two types of card distributing locations, the first type is via merchants, as students can go

directly to the merchants shop to fetch the cards, and this group of students is mainly

attracted by the offline leaflet and the other location is my part-time job office. Since I chose

to advertise this pick-up point via online advertising, this method should reflect the

effectiveness of the online advertisements.

3.4 Questionnaire

Inductive method is considered to move from the individual to the general and from specific

details to general phenomenon (Gray, 2004). It is carried out through analysing many

individual cases or sub-arguments, and then summing up the characteristics common to

them, in order to achieve a general conclusion.

3.4.1 Pilot Questionnaire

The questionnaire draft is based on the results of discussion which was conducted with my

colleagues, on the advice of the dissertation supervisor who also suggested I make some

minor adjustments to it. Following that, a pilot questionnaire was conducted in 18 people.

The main objective of the pilot questionnaire is to discover if there were any problems with

it, rather than obtaining the result. Some more adjustments were done after the pilot

questionnaire. In order to obtain a better response rate from the Chinese students, I chose to

conduct the questionnaire when the students came to the office of my part-time job to fetch

the discount card. (The information about the discount card will be explained in the section

3.5).

3.4.2 First Questionnaire

The first questionnaire is based on the questionnaire draft and with the assistance of my


supervisor; some minor tweaking was done in order to achieve clearer results for the

analysis process. Meanwhile, in order to obtain a better response from the potential

participants, I tried to ensure that the time for answering the total number of questions

would be less than 5 minutes. Over and above, Chinese snacks were provided for all the

participants, to make their experience pleasant. I carried out the first formal questionnaire

on 20th June and finished them in less than a week. The volume of the first questionnaire is

117; however, there are some amongst them that are invalid because some of the questions

were left unanswered. Consequently, I collected 103 valid questionnaires which can be used

to analysis. I completed the analysis with the assistance of the computer spreadsheet

software and obtained some useful data. Additionally, I established that there is definitely

some more space for improvements in the first formal questionnaire, since the answers of

some of the questions were not very useful at all.

3.4.3 Second Questionnaire

With the generous help of my supervisor, some additional adjustments were made based on

the findings of the first questionnaire. As in the first questionnaire, I controlled the volume

of the questions, so that all the participants needed less than 5 minutes to complete all the

questions and they were offered complimentary Chinese snacks after its completion o. The

second questionnaire started on the 3rd of August and the excepted sample number was

more than 200. In order to meet the requirement of 200 valid results, I conducted 210

questionnaires, since there was the possibility of some being invalid again.. Unfortunately,

the number of valid questionnaire was 191 out of 210, because there were more invalid

questionnaires than I had anticipated. Therefore I chose to conduct an additional

questionnaire and conducted a further 230 questionnaires. Consequently, the second

questionnaire last for one and a half weeks, which was a litter longer than I had predicted

and the valid volume of the second questionnaire was 208 out of 230. The results I managed

to successfully collect from the third attempt was much improved due to the enhancement of

the questionnaire and the larger volume of samples. Finally all the data was ready to analyse

after I entered the results into the computer.


3.5 Interviews

From Patton (1990), a qualitative approach is suitable for investigating people’s beliefs,

perceptions, values, points of view, and so forth. It assists researchers to unearth why a

particular thing occurs or exists, whereas the quantitative approach is appropriate to explain

what happens. Consequently, in this research, the interview will be utilised in light of to

gaining more detail for the reasons behind why people chose the answers they did in the

questionnaire.

According to the advice of my dissertation supervisor, I conducted some short interviews in

order to gain a more in-depth look into the data I collected in the questionnaire. During the

period of the two questionnaires, a total of 54 short interviews among the students were

conducted. An additional 5 interviews were conducted with 5 different local merchants.

3.5.1 The first wave of interviews

Specific interview questions were developed during the first interview period (see

Appendix). One manner in which to encourage the participants to take a quick interview

when they finished the questionnaire was to offer extra Chinese snacks as an additional

reward. The interview process took place after filling the questionnaire and usually lasted

not more than 10 minutes. During the progress of the interview, I asked the questions and

noted down the main points of participants’ idea. The total number of participants was 21.

After the analysis of the results, some of the additional viewpoints were collected. However,

there are some of the viewpoints that are not relevant to the research aims. Although the

interview questions are relevant with the questionnaire, the connections between them are

not close enough, which made it hard to analysis the results of the interview and help with

the understanding of the questionnaire results. Meanwhile, the quality of the questionnaire

and the limited time of the interview weakened the value of the first interview.


3.5.2 The second wave of interviews

After careful consideration, more open questions were utilised in the second interviews.

These open questions have close connections with each question, which can ensure superior

interview results. Furthermore, the duration of the second interview wave was extended to

approximately 20 minutes, which enriched the information that was can collected.

Additionally, the amount of Chinese snacks for the interview participants had been doubled

in contrast with the first interview wave.

3.5.3 Additional merchants’ interviews

In order to obtain a more in-depth perspective into the effectiveness of the advertisements,

interviews with local merchants were conducted. Since most employees of the merchants

usually do not have enough information about the operational status, I decided to interview

the managers. However, most of the local merchants’ managers are very busy and it is

challenging to make an appointment with them. Unfortunately only 5 interviews with the

merchants’ manager took place due to the limitations of time. The upside is that some useful

information was collected during these interviews and detail will be discussed in the

findings and discussions chapter.

3.6 Ethical issues

This research project was considered to be low risk by the supervisor and more adjustments

are made based on the rules of the “Ethics Policy Governing Research Involving Human

Participants, Personal Data and Human Tissue’, as shown on the University’s research ethics

website. Firstly, the questionnaires had been properly modified before the implementation of

the questionnaires, and all the data collected are anonymous. Secondly, the information sheet

of this research had been finished and was showed to all the participants within the consent

form.

To be specific: firstly, there is no obvious potential for physical and/or psychological harm /


distress to the participants. This research will not raise issues of personal safety for the

researchers involved in the project. Since the researcher needs to go to the office that is

located in the city center in order to conduct the questionnaire, attention should be focused

in the traffic although the office is in a secure environment. In a word, there are no serious

concerns about the research safety. Secondly, all the questionnaires and short interviews will

be carried out voluntarily. A short consent statement will be put in the questionnaire, and the

Chinese students can have the option to participate. Thirdly, the questionnaires will be

printed on paper and all the results will be recorded anonymously. All the paper based

questionnaires will be destroyed by shredder after the data is recorded into the computer.

Meanwhile, the file that contains the research data will be encrypted. Please refer to the

appendix for more information.


4 Findings and Discussions

________________________________________________________________

Various types of results including results from website database, questionnaires, interviews

and membership card distribution statistics will be presented and summarized in this

section. Meanwhile, the discussions will be showed after the analysis of the different types of

the result.

4.1 Website

4.1.1 The tendency of the website traffic

As is mentioned in section 3.2.3, different advertising methods had been used to advertise

the website. The page view of the website can be accessed through the online database, as is

illustrated in the picture.

[Figure 4.1 The Page view of SCSC website ]


As is shown in the picture, five different advertising methods were used to broadcast the

website. In the first ten days started from 10th June, Leaflet advertising was used and there

was a quick raise in the PV of SCSC website in the first three days, then the increasing speed

slowed down and then dropped to 441 on 19th June. Similarly, the other online advertising

methods were used in the next four periods and the trend of the PV is clearly demonstrated

by the graph above.

In light of acquiring clearer results, spread sheet software is utilised to analyse the data.

Firstly, the total page view and the average page view of the website in each period is

calculated, then the increased part of each period is calculated, for example, the increased

part of period “2012-6-30” is the total number of 6-30 minus the total number of period

“2012-6-20” , which is 2134 (8959-6825).

[Figure 4.2 Total PV of each period] [Figure 4.3 Average Increasing Number]

As illustrated in the graph above, the effectiveness of the different advertising methods can

be observed. The effectiveness of website advertising and leaflet advertising is particularly

outstanding. The other three advertising methods are also notable.

However, the limitations of this analysis are also obvious. It is not entirely accurate to simply

utilise the results of minus to obtain the exact number of increasing in each period. Although

errors exist, the results can be utilised as reference for analysis of the advertising

effectiveness. For example, the results indicate that online methods are as powerful as the


offline methods. If the costs are considered, online methods will bring more value for money

than the offline leaflet if the same income was provided. Additionally, since the advertising

methods used to advertise the websites followed an order, the results of the latter

advertising method would be influenced by the previous method, for example, the results of

Weibo advertising would be more or less influenced by leaflet advertising. Consequently, it

the order of advertising changed, the results might be different.

4.1.2 The incoming sources of the website


The graphs above indicate the different sources visiting the SCSC website. Apparently, the

majority of the website’s traffic comes from the outside links (68%). Only about a quarter of

the website traffic comes from its direct link. As is mentioned in the methodology section,

outside links are mainly including portal website (31 percent), QQ (13 percent), Weibo (10

percent), and Renren (8 percent). Consequently, the major source of the outside links is the

online advertising. The website traffic coming from direct links are mainly caused by offline

advertising, such as the leaflet and website address on the membership cards. The search

engine is another website advertising tool; however, due to the limitation of time and funds,

this method is not covered in this research



According to the data from the advertising methods used in the research, online advertising

have an obvious advantage compared with offline advertising methods. This certainly

indicates that website advertising is still powerful, the new tools such as QQ, Weibo, Renren

are useful and worth significant concern.

4.2 Membership card

In order to make the membership card picking-up job easier for the students in both the

University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, the office of Kaien in Sheffield City

centre, where I do my part-time work, was used to distribute the membership cards.

Meanwhile, in order to ensure the results of distributing the membership cards were useful

for the research; online advertising methods are mainly used to broadcast Kaien office as the

membership card pick-up point. Membership cards distributed by the merchants are mainly

due to the offline advertising methods, such as the leaflets distributed in June or the leaflets

left in the merchants’ place.



It can be easily observed that a greater number of membership cards are distributed in the

office than the merchants’ place. Some of these reasons are brought to light during the

interviews from some merchants. Firstly, the merchants are usually very busy and they don’t

want to take on extra work. Secondly, the willing of distributions the membership cards is

not very strong simply because the distribution is not financially supported. However, since

the membership cards were distributed in five different merchants’ place, the number

together still occupies 37 percent of the total amount. Four various online advertising

methods are utilised to broadcast the office as the main location to pick up the membership

cards. The effect of online advertising is fair as there were 63 percent of the membership

cards distributed from the office, and almost 56% of the membership card came from the

online advertising, the remaining 7% percent came from the other means, such as a

recommendation of a friend.

The detailed distribution statistics of the membership cards can be observed in the graphs

above, apparently, merchants demonstrate the highest number, because there were five

different merchants distributing the cards. However, website advertising is still powerful and

QQ, Weibo and Renren are also capable online advertising methods.



4.3 Questionnaire & Interviews

The main findings of the interviews results have been integrated into the analysis of the

questionnaire results.

4.3.1 First Questionnaire

Sample analysis of the first questionnaire

[Figure 4.8 The gender of the participants] [Figure 4.9 The age of the participants]

As is illustrated in the pie chart above, the majority of the participants are male, which is

almost twice as much as the female participants. According to the interviews after the

questionnaire, males tend to be more courageous and most of them enjoy participating,

while females on the other hand, especially those new to Sheffield, are shyer, and prefer to


avoid these kinds of studies. The second graph illustrates that most of the participants in the

first questionnaire is between 18-22 years, which is not very distinguishable results.

However, the reasons for this were observed in the interview. The majority of the

participants are new students in Sheffield here for the ten week ELTC language course; those

students mainly attend to the undergraduate course. The students that came to Sheffield last

year already collected their discount card and not likely to come to the office to pick up the

new one.

[Figure 4.10 Methods better for advertising] [Figure 4.11 Agreeable methods]

Those two graphs reflect the results of third and fourth question of the questionnaire.

According to the results of the third question, website advertising and email advertising were

the most supported, followed by leaflet advertising, Renren Weibo and QQ. However, when

the participants reached the fourth question, the result was changed a little.

[Figure 4.12 The combination results of Q3 & Q4]

The graph above indicates the combination of Q3 and Q4’s results. According to the statistics

of Q4 the participants tend to accept website, email, and leaflet more than the other


advertising methods, which is consistent with Q3. However, the acceptance of QQ has

increased, while the acceptance of Renren and Weibo dropped. According to the results of

the interview, the majority of the participants use Renren and Weibo the most, and too many

advertisements in them would cause them discomfort. Consequently, although they think

Renren and Weibo are capable advertising methods, they would prefer not to receive the

advertisements through them. QQ, however, is different from those two methods, because the

software itself has built-in advertisements, and most of the QQ users have grown accustomed

to the advertisements and gradually accepted this fact. Additionally, most of the participants

were recruited when they came to the office to get the card, and when they participated in

the questionnaire, most of them just got their membership card. Consequently, the

acceptance of the membership card advertisements dropped because some of them still

didn’t have much idea about the membership card.

[Figure 4.13 Which methods are more agreeable to you ]

Since the acceptance of the customers is the main research focus, Q5 was set to ensure the

results collected through the questionnaire are trustworthy. In fact, the results of Q4 and Q5

are consistent. Since the request of Q5 is “choose up to 2”, the number declined slightly in

contrast with the results of Q4, but the trends are remaining the same.



The two pie charts above illustrate the viewpoint of the participants in the statement about

online and offline advertisements. Apparently, the majority of the participants being 63

percent, was of the opinion that the online advertising is better than offline advertisements;

especially for the 23 percent of them who are strongly agree. The reason of this phenomenon

was observed in the interview. To be specific, most of the participants used the Internet

every day, they believed that in this Internet age, online advertising is the trend of the

advertising development. Additionally, there are also lots of advertising such as the low cost,

distribution convenience and quick spread speed, etc. On the other hand, 20 percent of

them choose disagree, because they felt that a leaflet and the other traditional means of

advertising had more advantages than the online advertising according to the interview.

Questions 7-9 was utilised to learn about the membership cards on an in-depth basis.

Questions 10-15 was utilised to discover the acceptance of different online advertisements

and Question 16-20 is utilised to discover the frequency of different online advertisements.

Unfortunately, the results from the questionnaire are not very differentiable due to the

inappropriate setting of the question and answer. According to the interview, some of the

participants did not fully understand some of the question, while some of them thought that

it is was difficult to choose, because they had to try to recall some vague memory.

Consequently, many of them simply selected the options in the middle. Improvements

concerning this very issue have been considered with the great help from my supervisor and

more useful data is available in the next section.


4.3.2 Second Questionnaire

Sample analysis of the second questionnaire

[Figure 4.15 Gender of the participants] [Figure 4.16 Age of the participants]

According to the first graph above, the female participants have increased from 35% in the

first questionnaire to 44% in the second questionnaire. The reason to this phenomenon,

according to the interview, is that the Chinese snacks had been doubled as a reward, which

attracted more female to participate. According to the second graph above, the age of the

participants had been more distinguishable compared with statistics in the first

questionnaire. The reason to this phenomenon, according to the interview, is that most of the

participants are the six or four weeks are postgraduate students, which is different from the

results in the first questionnaire. The distinguishable result can be used to analyze in

combination with the other question results and generate more useful results.



This graph reflects the results of the third question in the second questionnaire. It is easy to

observe that the online advertising methods have already become the main medium in which

to broadcast information. To be more specific, the total numbers of responses, who were of

the opinion that online advertisements are good advertising methods, are 575, thus the

average numbers of the participants is 115, signifying only a small amount less than the

participants who support leaflet. Consequently, it is still acceptable to make use of any of the

online advertising methods to replace leaflet advertisements, which cost more money than

online advertising.

[Figure 4.16 The supporting rate of advertising methods]

Meanwhile, since the advertising methods in the graph are the main methods for the

Sheffield Chinese merchants to advertise, the online methods have become the main way to

advertise over that of the leaflet. What’s more, according to the results of the questionnaires,

the supporting rate of online advertising being 72 percent, is more than twice as much as the

offline advertising methods being only 28 percent.

[Figure 4.17 The comparison between Q3, Q4 and Q5]


This graph illustrates the comparison between the questionnaire results for Q3, Q4 and Q5. It

is plain to distinguish that the results of Q4 and Q5 are similar, which proves that the

supporting rate of online advertising methods are stable with or without the comparison of

the offline advertising methods. Meanwhile, the results of Q3 and Q4 illustrates that the

supporting rate of leaflet, membership cards, website and Weibo are similar with the

acceptance of the participants. However, the supporting rate of email, QQ and Renren are

quite different from the acceptance of the participants.

There are several reasons that might be related to this situation according to the results of

the interview. To be exact, there are some participants who thought that it seemed to be an

official method to advertise through email, because the sender of this email could be the

official address of one company, or the email might contains the official logo of one company.

However, some participants who support the email advertising, also believed that there are

too many spam emails nowadays and they didn’t think that email advertising was agreeable

with them simply because the spam annoys them. Meanwhile, they still argued that the

feature of the spam emails wouldn’t change the feature of the official emails which are not

spam.

The situation of email is similar with Renren. The participants found that the endless

notifications of Renren messages cost them a great deal of time and they also didn’t feel the

advertisements of Renren were agreeable to them. However, this situation doesn’t alter the

fact that Renren does have a good system of anti-fake system. Companies or organisations

can only post Renren advertisements after they acquire the certification from Renren, which

can prevent fake messages from rising. Consequently some of the participants thought the

advertisements of Renren were annoying, but trustworthy.

It is also easily to discover that the acceptance of QQ and the supporting rate of QQ are

different. After the interview and the analysis of the questionnaire result, some of the

participants thought that QQ advertising was most agreeable to them, but not an efficient

advertising method. Those opinions are mainly from the participants who selected the email


advertising as “is not agreeable”, but an efficient advertising method. According to the results

of the interview, the majority of the QQ users are used to the advertisements because the QQ

software has built-in advertisements. However, those are the kind of participants who don’t

want to see too many spam emails in their inboxes. Meanwhile, there are also some people

who are of the view that QQ is good instant message software, because it makes

communication much easier. The QQ users can easily get in touch with the company service

if they are interested in the advertisements. The convenience of the communication leads to

an increase of the QQ advertising acceptance.

Some interesting points worth mentioning:

Some of the reasons that a number of participants felt the leaflet was agreeable to them was

because they thought they were well designed and contains lots of colour and amazing

features, which added something interesting to their dull lives. Meanwhile, some of the

participants had the idea of using the back side of the leaflet to take notes as it was only

single sided with print.

Another point is that although most of the participants thought that Weibo and Renren are

information sharing media, some of the participants thought that there is too much

information in them and they usually only check the message from their friends by blocking

the others.

Q6 online advertising vs. offline advertising



According to the results of Q6 in the second questionnaire, it is easy to deduce that majority

of the participants, being 54 percent, was of the view that online advertising is better than

offline advertisements, being 24 percent. Obviously it can be assumed that online advertising

has been well recognised and accepted as the main part of advertising methods. According to

the interview based on the questionnaire, some of the participants, who chose neutral, didn’t

care too much about advertisements, or they didn’t really gave it too much thought.


What’s more, it can be seen from the graph that most of participants either agree or strongly

agree with the statements that “online advertising is better than traditional offline

advertisements”. It signifies that nearly half of the participants preferred the online

advertising over the offline advertisements. According to the interviews, there are five main

reasons contributing to this result. Firstly, participants argued that with the development of

the internet and information technology, the world nowadays is an information society, the


online advertising is following the trend of the times. Secondly, the online advertising is

transferred much faster than offline advertisements. Thirdly, the cost of distributing online

advertising is usually much lower than offline advertisements. Fourthly, it is simpler to

advertise online and lastly people in increasing numbers are spending more and more time

online, which provides an excellent environment for the online advertisements.

Additionally, there is still 24 percent of participants who disagree with this statement. The

reasons are as follows: firstly, some of the participants still prefer the traditional way in hand

approach. The offline advertisements are usually tangible and can be felt and touched.

Secondly, some of the participants are of the opinion that there is too much fake information

in the Internet, thus they usually tend to overlook the online advertisements. Finally, some of

the participants thought that the offline advertisements are more official than the online

advertisements. They believed that the offline advertisements are usually reliable and

well-designed while lots of the online advertisements are not properly organized.

Q7 &Q8 Advertising frequency & effectiveness

[Figure 4.20 How often do you received different types advertisements]

This graph illustrates the frequency of the advertising distribution to the participants. It is

obviously deduced that a large number of participants only receive the leaflet

advertisements occasionally (sometimes), while all the other online advertisements are


received regularly (often). According to the results of the interview and the expenses in this

research, offline advertisements, such as printing and distributing leaflets cost more money

and time than distributing online advertisements. Consequently, that makes it

straightforward to understand that most of the participants thought the frequency of

receiving leaflets was only occasionally (sometimes), while the majority of the participants

chose the frequency of receiving online advertisements as regular (often).

[Figure 4.21 Leaflet Advertising Frequency]

The leaflet was utilised as the main offline method by the Chinese merchants to advertise.

One of the main disadvantages and features of the leaflet is that the cost of printing and

distributing is too high. The initial leaflet designing cost was not very high; however, the

sustaining input was high because of the cost of printing and distributing. Consequently,

most of the participants chose “sometimes” instead of “often”. According to the interview of

the merchants, they only utilised leaflet advertising when it was extremely necessary and the

amount of leaflets were controlled due to the high costs.

[Figure 4.22 Advertising frequency of Email, QQ and Renren]

Email is one of the most popular online advertising methods used by the Sheffield Chinese

merchants according to the merchants’ interviews. It is easy to learn that majority of the


participants, being 63% percent, often received email advertisements. The reason for this is

that the costs of distributing email advertisements are relatively low in contrast with the

leaflet; consequently, the merchants were more willing to advertise via email to cut costs.

Similarly, the advertising frequency of QQ and Renren are similar with that of email.

[Figure 4.23 Advertising frequency of Weibo and website]

In contrast with email, QQ and Renren, the advertising frequency of Weibo and Websites are

a fraction different. To be precise, the participants who chose “often” are 51 percent, which is

almost 10 percent greater than other online advertising methods. According to the interview,

the advertisements of the website were well controlled in order to provide a sounder reading

environment. Similarly, the advertisements in Weibo are also well controlled, because there

is a large amount of fans, thus advertisements must be limited to a small scale, or the

followers will block or unfollow the merchants.

Q8 the Acceptance of advertisements


[Figure 4.24 What do you think about the different types of advertisements]

It is easy to deduce from the graph, that the majority of the participants were of the view that

the leaflet was “mostly useful”, while the minority of the participants were of the opinion that

the online advertising was “partially useful”. The reason that led to this situation is that the

number of the leaflet was well controlled to save costs. What’s more, the design of the leaflet

and the content of the leaflet are usually well examined, because the cost of the leaflet is high

and the merchants always takes it seriously. In contrast, the cost of online advertising is

relatively low, so the examination of the online advertisements are considerably rough,

meanwhile, there are also some fake or fraudulent online advertisements. This can be due to

the facts of the convenience and the low-cost of the online advertisements. For that reason

the drawback of the online advertisements is that the acceptance of the online

advertisements is a great deal lower than the leaflet.

[Figure 4.25 Leaflet advertising acceptance]

It is can be easily discovered, from the graph above, that the acceptance of the leaflet is


considerably high. More than half of the participants were of the view that the leaflets are

“mostly useful”. According to the results of the interview, the majority of the participants

would like to find something in their mail box, even if it is only an advertising leaflet. They

thought that an advertising leaflet is substantial and better than nothing at all. Furthermore,

some participants argued that the information on the leaflet was quite important to them, as

it contained material that they wanted to know about, such as take away menus, party

advertisements or discount coupons. Over and above, some of the participants felt that the

leaflet distributor only distributed the leaflets near to its target customers, so for the most

part, the leaflets they received were genuinely useful.

[Figure 4.26 Advertising acceptance of Email, QQ and Renren]

In contrast, the acceptance of the online advertisements is lower than the acceptance of the

leaflet. To be specific, the acceptance of email, QQ and Renren are similar, less than 23

percent of the participants viewed those advertisements to be “mostly useful”. Meanwhile,

more than 56 percent of participants viewed those advertisements to be “partially useful”.

Additionally, more than 17 percent of the participants thought that the QQ and Renren

advertisements not to be useful at all. The reasons can be found in the results of the

interview. Some participants argued that there are too many advertisements in QQ and

Renren, some of them are posted by QQ or Renren, not the merchants, which is not relevant

with the participants, QQ software has built-in advertisements in every software (except the

monthly-paid customers). Some of these irrelevant advertisements annoy some of the

participants; consequently, some of the participants chose “nothing useful” instead of”

partially useful” or “nothing useful”.


[Figure 4.27 Advertising acceptance of Weibo and website]

The participants, who viewed Weibo and website advertisements to be ”mostly useful”, are

more than 35 percent, which is higher than the acceptance of the other three online

advertising methods above. The reason is that the examination of Weibo and website is

stricter than the other three advertisements according to the interview.

The combination of Q7 and Q8

Since each advertising method has a different distributing frequency and acceptance, it is

worth the effort to combine these different methods of data to discover the effectiveness of

these methods. Without considering the costs of the advertising, it is obvious that the

acceptance of the leaflet is higher than the online advertising methods, although the

distributing frequency is lower than the online advertisements. This indicates if the amount

of advertisements is set, the acceptance of leaflets is better than any other online

advertisements. However, when cost is considered in the advertising plan, the results would

be quite different, for in the real world, the cost and the acceptance are the two important

attributes of the advertisements.


[Figure 4.28 Advertising Frequency & Acceptance]

In this research, during the period of advertising for the website and membership cards, both

online advertising and offline advertising are utilised. The costs of those methods will be

considered in order to give a rough analysis of the effectiveness of these methods.

A defective analyzing method

The following data was collected during the website advertising in this project. According to

the project record, the costs of printing 2 000 leaflets is 100 GBP (The reason why choose

2000 is that in the QQ advertising in this project, the maximum number of QQ message I can

send for one period is 2000). The cost of leaflet designing, delivery and distribution is about

23 hours. If the wage is 5 GBP pounds per hour, for distributing the leaflet the total cost for

distributing 2 000 leaflets would be 215 GBP. However, if QQ advertising was used as the

advertising medium, the cost of designing and distributed 2 000 QQ messages is about 4


hours. So the estimated costs of distributing 2000 QQ messages is about only 20 GBP.

In order to generate a more clear and visual result, the following defective method could be

used. Please note there are errors in this method and the data generated through this

method are not used for accurate analysis.

[Figure 4.25 Leaflet advertising acceptance] [Figure 4.26 QQ advertising acceptance]

If the acceptance of the advertisements is considered, different values could be linked with

different types of acceptance. In this case, 3 points are linked with “all useful”, 2 “with mostly

useful” and 1 with “partially useful”. To sum up, since the percentage of the participants

thought QQ advertising is “mostly useful” is 11% and 69% with the “ partially useful”, the

acceptance points of 2 000 QQ messages is worked out as: (11%x2+69%x1) x2 000=1 820.

likewise, the acceptance points of 2 000 leaflets is worked out as: (1%x3+59%x2+33%x1) x2

000=3 040.

If the acceptance and the costs are considered at the same time, QQ advertising is 91 points

per GBP, while the leaflet is about 14 points per GBP. It is easily observed that QQ advertising

would be far better than the leaflet advertising methods within the same bracket of costs.

Due to the limitation of time, the email advertising for the website and membership card was

not fully carried out in this project, however, the cost of QQ, Renren, Weibo and Website

advertising is similar. At length we can come to the conclusion that the effectiveness of online

advertisements is far superior within the same bracket of costs.

Q9 where did you hear the services?



It can be deduced from the graph above that the online advertising surpasses the offline

advertising for the Chinese merchants in Sheffield. According to the interview conducting

with the merchants, online advertising is the most popular means of publicizing, because of

the low costs. Meanwhile, the online advertising adapts to the new information society and it

is far easier to manage. Interestingly one of the merchants mentioned that the websites are

usually in China and thus are not supervised by the local government and it is easier to

advertise online in China because they don’t need to apply for permission for some of the

offline advertising.


According to the two graphs above, it can be observed that websites are the most popular

advertising methods for the Sheffield local merchants. Moreover, leaflets, QQ, and some other


methods are also used. The reasons can be found in the results of the interview.

To be specific, firstly, the reason why the website is the most popular advertising method is

that the contents on the website are usually the only source they can get because most of the

Chinese students usually made use of the website before they traveled to the UK in oder to

get some relevant information about their destination, similar like holiday trip planning.

Consequently, the majority of the people chose the website as one of the options of the last

question in the questionnaire.

Secondly, the leaflet is the most success advertising method at the beginning of the new

autumn semester according to the interview of the merchants. During this period, there are

many new students in Sheffield and the leaflet is the most direct way to advertise.

Thirdly, membership cards, email, Weibo, Renren and QQ are usually a little bit slower for the

new students in contrast to the leaflet, because those methods usually need subscription.

The new students usually only subscribe to those after they stay a while in Sheffield.

Fourthly, the participants who chose “other” thought they heard of those different services

mainly from their friends, for example, their friends’ treat or recommendation. The Chinese

students typically stay in a small group, and habitually share their ideas or options between

each other. Consequently, a large number of participants chose “other” as one option.

To sum up, different advertising method suit different situations. Some of the advertising

methods are well planned from the beginning, so the method works well in the long run. To

be specific, as is mentioned above, the website and the leaflet is the most effective

advertising method at the beginning of the new academic year while the other online

advertising could be used after the new students came to Sheffield for a while. The best

advertising plan is a combination of different advertising media and keeps the brand

awareness alive for the customers. Additionally, mouth to mouth is an essential media that is

worth paying attention to.



According to the graph above, we can deduce that different types of merchants choose

different advertising methods. Different features of these services led to different usage of

these advertising methods. For example, the main advertising methods for the Chinese

restaurant are website and mouth to mouth. Meanwhile, the Chinese agencies, such as

education, property or travel advertised by means of leaflet and websites. Also, services such

as house moving or electronics advertised mainly via websites.

Gender and age analysis

Due to the constraints of the words and time, the combination analysis with gender and age

cannot be all presented. The results of Q5 are used as the typical case to do the combination

analysis.


[Figure 4.33 Preferable advertising methods divided by gender]

According to the graph above, it can be seen that female are more attracted by social

networks advertising (Renren) or micro blog advertising (Weibo), male tend to prefer

website advertising and email advertising. The reasons responsible to this phenomenon,

according to the interview, is that female tend to use Weibo and Renren to get varies type of

information while male are tend to acquire information through website. Additionally, male

are more willing to subscribe email advertising.

[Figure 4.34 Preferable advertising methods divided by age]

According to the graph above, it can be seen that the age of the customer also matters to the

advertising methods. Young students prefer Weibo best than any other advertising method.

To be specific, the young students （aged from 18-23）believed that Weibo and Renren are


preferable and they can easily get information including advertising from Weibo and Renren

because they use them almost every day. On the contrary, the older students (aged from

24-30) tend to prefer website and email because they had kept the habit of visiting website

and reading emails for a long time. When they first get in touch with the internet, Weibo and

Renren didn’t exist, the only choice they got is website email and QQ. Because of the power of

habit and the primacy effect, they thought that website and email are their preferable

advertising method.

Additionally, QQ advertising is the most stable advertising among different age category.

According to the interview, most of the participants believed that QQ are the only online

instant message software they use every day. They can communicate with the merchants

when they got the QQ advertisements. For example, when they received an advertisement

about travel, they can ask the people who distribute the advertisements about more detail

information such as the departure time.


5 Conclusions

________________________________________________________________

5.1 Conclusions

Online advertising represents one of the most popular forms of advertising media in this

information society. According to the findings and discussions outlined in the previous

chapter, some conclusions can be made based on the advertising principles and the results of

this research.

5.1.1 Depends on the advertising budget

The advertising budget functions as one of the most important factors in advertising. As

discussed in the previous chapter, a combination of both online advertising methods and

offline advertising methods can achieve better results. Consequently, if the budget

satisfactorily covers the costs of both online and offline advertising, then this will provide the

most effective method. However, if the budget is insufficient, then more emphasis should be

placed on online advertising than offline advertising. However, with a very restricted budget,

it might be worthwhile to eliminate offline advertising and implement online advertising

alone because, with the same budget, online advertising incorporates greater advantages in

both numbers and effectiveness.

5.1.2 Different service, different advertising strategy.

As discussed in the previous chapter, different types of services contain different advertising

strategies, for example, restaurants, supermarket, or house moving services all have different

marketing targets. The features of the marketing target determine the focus of the

advertising target. Therefore, different strategies should be developed based on the

advertising target.


5.1.3 Age and gender do matter.

As discussed above, the different genders have different attitudes to each advertising method.

Females are more attracted to social networks or micro-blogs, whereas males tend to prefer

websites and email. In addition, the customer’s age also matters when it comes to advertising

methods. As mentioned in the previous chapter, young students prefer Weibo to any other

advertising method, however they prefer not to receive too many advertisements in Weibo

because they use this platform on a daily basis. On the contrary, they prefer to receive online

advertisements through other online media such as QQ or Renren.

5.1.4 Word of mouth

The importance of “word of mouth” was discussed in the previous chapter and, according to

the student interviews, lots of students heard of the merchants from their friends. According

to the interviews of local merchants in Sheffield, they also believed that their friends

introduced lots of students to the merchants and the percentage of the older customers

rose after the beginning of the new semester. All the evidence proves that word of mouth

represents a very important factor for the merchants to consider.

5.1.5 The design of the online advertising

According to the previous chapter, some of the students dislike online advertising because

they feel that it is poorly designed and they are reluctant to trust those advertisements.

Consequently, merchants should unify the design of the advertisements and present a

healthy image of the merchants through well-designed online advertising. Meanwhile, it

would be beneficial to train and supervise the advertising staff in order to provide clear and

effective advertisements.

.


5.1.6 Better interaction with customers.

As proven in the previous chapter, students welcome and accept QQ advertising and many

reasons are responsible for this phenomenon with the most significant one being the

effective interaction with the students. As online instant message software, by using QQ,

merchants can have quick and direct contact with the students. This should benefit the

merchants since the students prefer to use QQ to receive advertisements as it allows them to

communicate with the merchants directly after receiving the advertisements.

5.2 Answers to the research questions

According to the findings of this research, online advertising have been the most effective

ways with a relative low cost for the Chinese merchants in Sheffield. The internet based

advertising has prevailed over the leaflet advertising when the costs are considered. Since

different online advertising have different advantages such as preferable advertising target,

website would be a good online advertising method based on the limited data I collected in

this project. Additionally, the age of the students and the type of the merchants do have

relation with the advertising method, so merchants should take these factors into

consideration when choosing the proper advertising method.

5.3 Limitations and lessons

Due to the limited time, some of the defective methods were used in analyzing the result. For

example, the minus methods used to analysis the tendency of the website and the defective

methods to calculate the acceptance points. Meanwhile, due to the finance and time

limitation, different orders of advertising the website cannot be carried out, only one order

was chose, so the data collected contains the errors caused by the influence between

different methods. Additionally, email advertising hadn’t been carried out due to the

limitations of time and finance.

There is not enough to time finish the dissertation nicely because the advertising and data


collecting took me too much time. I should either started this research earlier or reduced the

number of the questionnaire samples in order to leave enough time for me to do a better

analysis, do more reading for the literature review and write a better dissertation.

Thanks to the advice of the supervisor, the second questionnaire was very useful compared

to the first one. Meanwhile, the second wave of interviews was well connected with the

second questionnaire, which helped me a lot in analysis the questionnaire results.

5.4 Suggestions for future work

Due to the finance and time limitation, as is mentioned in the previous section, some of the

research stages are not well carried out, it would be more helpful to use more time to do a

more in-depth research. For example, if the time is permitted, more sample including the

people who are not students, or from the other countries can be recruited. Furthermore,

email advertising can also be carried if time is enough.

Additionally, the research should be kept up to date because the topic of this research is

mutable because of the rapid development of the internet technology. The latest literature

should be referred and more primary research should be carried out in order to get the latest

results of this research topic.

Words account: 12783


6 References

________________________________________________________________

Bai, B., Low, R. and Wen, I., (2008), “The impact of website quality on customer satisfaction

and purchase intensions: evidence from Chinese online visitors”. International Journal of

Hospitality Management, Vol. 27 pp. 391- 402

Brajnik, G. & Gabrielli, S. (2010). “A Review of Online Advertising Effects on the User

Experience”. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, Volume 26(10), pp

971-997.

Bryman, A. and Bell, E., (2007) Business Research Methods, 2nd Ed. New York: Oxford

University Press

Cranor, L. (2012). “Can Users Control Online Behavioral Advertising Effectively?”. IEEE

Security & Privacy, Volume 10 (2), pp. 93-96.

Danaher, P. & Mullarkey G. (2003). “Factors Affecting Online Advertising Recall: A Study of

Students”. Journal of Advertising Research, Volume 43 (03), pp. 252-267.

Evans, D. (2008). “The Economics of the Online Advertising Industry”. Review of Network

Economics. Volume 7(3), pp. 1446-9022.


Ha, L. (2008). “Online advertising research in advertising journals: A review”. Journal of

Current issues and research in Advertising, Volume 30(1)

McCoy, S. Everard, A.,Polak, P. & Galletta, D. (2007). “The effects of online advertising”.

Communications of the ACM, Volume 50(3), pp. 84 – 88.

Ha, L. (2008). “An integrated model of advertising clutter in offline and online media.”

International Journal of Advertising, Volume 27(4), pp. 569-592.

Goldfarb, A. (2011). “Online advertising, behavioral targeting, and privacy”. Communications

of the ACM, Volume 54(5), pp. 25-27.

Lewis, R. (2010). “Measuring the effects of online advertising on human behavior using

natural and field experiments”, Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept.

of Economics, 2010.

Kelly, L. et al. (2010). “Avoidance of advertising in social networking sites: the teenage

perspective”. Journal of Interactive Advertising, Volume 10( 2).

Merisavo, M. et al. (2007). “An Empirical Study of the Drivers of Consumer Acceptance of


Mobile Advertising”. Journal of Interactive Advertising, Vol 7. No 2. Spring

Reiley, D. (2011). “Which half Is wasted?:controlled experiments to measure

online-advertising effectiveness”. Proceedings of the 17th ACM SIGKDD international

conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining, p. 777

Scott, D. (2010). The new rules of marketing and PR: how to use social

media, blogs, news releases, online video, & viral marketing to reach

buyers directly (2nd ed.).

Sternthal, B., Craig, C. S. (1982). "Consumer behavior." United States: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Xuan, Z. (2011). An evaluation into the User’s Acceptance in Online Hotel Booking and

Reviewing Website in LiJiang. University of Sheffield. Dissertation.

Zeng, F. et al. (2009). “Social Factors in User Perceptions and Responses to Advertising in

Online Social Networking”. Journal of Interactive Advertising, Vol 10 No 1 (fall 209). pp. 1-13.

Zhao, Z. (2008). An evaluation of search engine web advertising. University of Sheffield.

Dissertation.


7 Appendix

________________________________________________________________

7.1 Website Pictures

7.1.1 Website Picture

[Figure 7.1 SCSC Forum] [Figure 7.2 SCSC Portal]


7.1.2 Website Database Picture

[Figure 7.3 Picture of Tencent Analytics System]


7.2 Membership Cards Information

[Figure 7.4 SCSC membership card special offers]

1. Please find the special offers in the table above. (Not the full list).

2. There will be more merchants where the cardholder can enjoy a discount.

Please visit the webpage: http://www.scsc.in/thread-205-1-1.html for the latest updates.

English Chinese Discount

China Red (Sichuan cuisine) 满庭红川菜馆 10% off

China Red (Hotpot) 满庭红干锅 10% off

Wongting 金煌庭 10% off

Yummy (Near west street) 美味阁 10% off

Noodle Inn（London Road) 面轩(伦敦路) 10% off(over 20 Pounds)

Noodle Inn (West Street) 面轩(西街) 10% off(over 20 Pounds)

Mandar Inn 川粤轩 10% off(over 20 Pounds)

Cake'R'US（London Road）麒饼屋(伦敦路） 10% off(over 20 Pounds)

Cake'R'US（West Street）麒饼屋(西街） 10% off(over 20 Pounds)

Noodle-Inn Hotpot 面轩火锅 10% off(over 20 Pounds)

Harmony ( Near west street) 饭厅 10% off(over 20 Pounds)

Jiezi King 羯子王 10% off(over 20 Pounds)

Huiwei (west street) 回味 12% off

Sin Yuan 新园 10% off(over 20 Pounds)

Hongkong Wok 香港茶餐厅 10% off(over 25 Pounds)

MULAN (west street) 家乡菜 10% off(over 20 Pounds)*

Hua Mei Chinese supermarket 华美超市 5% off (over 15 Pounds)

Rong Zheng Chinese supermarket 荣正超市 5% off (over 5 Pounds)

Deyi Chinese supermarket 德益行 5% off (over 30 Pounds)

Melody KTV 美乐迪 KTV 12% off(Over 20 Pounds)

Gaoge KTV 高歌 KTV 10% off(Over 20 Pounds)

Cain Travel 凯恩国际旅游 10% off

Cain Education Consultant 凯恩国际留学 20% off

Cain Education Visa Service 凯恩国际签证 20% off

Sakushi 20% off

PJ Taste(west street) 10% off(over 20 Pounds)*

Crown Pizza (west street) 10% off

POPYES (west street) 10% off

Jannath (west street) 10% off

Aspalas (west street) 10% off

Nirmal(west street) 15% off

Café Kebaish (west street) 10% off

EFES (west street) 15% off

Picciolos (west street) 5% off

Russhills 5% off

Sheffield Deals website extral 12% off

Sakis 10% off

Food Stop 10% off(Over 7 Pounds)

Hallam Booze 5% off*

Central News 10% off*

N2C Computer (west street) 10% off*

SCSC Membership Card Speical Offers


[Figure 7.5 SCSC membership card design]


7.3 Questionnaire Information

7.3.1 The First Questionnaire (Translation)

The main objectives of this study are to find out the acceptance of consumers of different forms

of online advertising. This is a short questionnaire which only takes less than 5 minutes; this

questionnaire is anonymous and all the information you provide is confidential and will not be

used in any other ways.

I would be very delighted and grateful for your participation.

1. Your Gender:

Male/Female

2. Your Age:

Less than 17/18-22/23-26/27-30/31 or more

3. Which methods do you think are better for advertising? (choose up to 3)

Leaflet/Logo on the Membership cards/Website/Email advertisements/Weibo/QQ/Renren/

Other______________________

4. Which methods are more agreeable to you?(choose up to 3)

Leaflet/Logo on the Membership cards/Website/Email advertisements/Weibo/QQ/Renren/

Other______________________

5. Which online advertising methods are more agreeable to you? (Choose up to 2)

Website/Email advertisements/Weibo/QQ/Renren/ Other______________________

6. Online advertising is better than traditional advertisements such as leaflet.

Strong agree/Agree/Neutral/Disagree/Strong disagree

7. What is the mainly reason for you to use the discount card?

Get discount in Supermarket/ Get discount in restaurant / Other_________________

8. How often do you use discount cards in restaurants last week?

More than 6 times per week//4-6 times per week /1-3 times per week/less 1 per week

9. How often do you use discount cards in Chinese supermarket last week?

More than 6 times per week//4-6 times per week /1-3 times per week/less 1 per week


10. How often do you think the leaflets you receive are useful?

Usually/ Often/ Sometimes/Never

11. How often do you click advertisements in the website?


12. How often do you think the advertisements you receive in Weibo is useful?


13. How often do you think the advertisements you receive in Email is useful?


14. How often do you think the advertisements you receive in Renren is useful?


15. How often do you think the advertisements you receive in QQ is useful?


16. How often do you receive advertisements leaflet in average?

Less than 1 time per week/1-4 time per week/more than 5 times per week

17. How often do you receive advertisements in Weibo?

More than 5 times per day/1-4 time per day/5-6 times per week/less 5-6 per week

18. How often do you receive advertisements in QQ in average?


19. How often do you receive advertisements in Renren in average?


20. How often do you receive advertisements in Email in average?


Thanks very much for your time.


7.3.2 The Second Questionnaire (Translation)

The main objectives of this study are to find out the acceptance of consumers of different

forms of online advertising. This is a short questionnaire which only takes less than 5

minutes; this questionnaire is anonymous and all the information you provide is

confidential and will not be used in any other ways.

I would be very delighted and grateful for your participation.


Thanks very much for your time.


7.4 Consent Form

Title of Research Project: __________________________

Name of Researcher: _______________________________

Participant Identification Number for this project: ____________________

1. I confirm that I have read and understand the information sheet dated

explaining the above research project and I have had the

opportunity to ask questions about the project.

2. I understand that my participation is voluntary and that I am free to

withdraw at any time without giving any reason and without there being any

negative consequences. In addition, should I not wish to answer any

particular question or questions, I am free to decline.

The contact number of the lead researcher is

3. I understand that my responses will be kept strictly confidential.

I give permission for members of the research team to have access to my

anonymised responses. I understand that my name will not be linked with

the research materials, and I will not be identified or identifiable in the

report or reports that result from the research.

4. I agree for the data collected from me to be used in future research.

5. I agree to take part in the above research project.

Copies:

The participant should receive a copy of the consent form, the letter/pre-written

script / information sheet and any other written information provided to the

participants. An example of the consent form should be placed in the project’s main

record, which must be kept in a secure location.


7.5 Information Sheet

Research Project Title

The Consumer Acceptance of Different Online Advertising Forms

Invitation

You are being invited to take part in a research study. It is important for you to

understand why this research is being done and what is involved. Please take

your time to read the information below carefully. Ask us if there is anything that

is not clear or if you would like more information.

What is the project’s purpose?

This research aims at finding the acceptance of different online advertising

methods. The chosen methods are some website, online forum, social networks,

micro blog and the online advertisements with the supplements of offline

methods such as printed resources, or loyalty cards. The duration of the project

would be 4 months.

Why have I been chosen?

Any Chinese students who currently lived in Sheffield are welcomed to

participate in this study. This information can help for the research project.

Do I have to take part?

It is up to you to decide whether or not to be involved in this research. If you do

decide to take part, your information will be kept anonymous and confidential.

You are free to withdraw at any time without giving a reason and it won’t affect

any benefits that you are entitled to in any way.

What will happen to me if I take part?

What you will do is to fill in the questionnaire which only takes less than 5

minutes. If you would like to take part in the short interview after filling the

questionnaire, which will last less than 20 minutes, that would be very helpful.

You only need to participate in one questionnaire and one optional short

interview. All the results will only be used in the research.

What are the possible disadvantages and risks of taking part?

There are no obvious disadvantages and risks of taking part. Since you need to go

to the office which located in the city center to fill in the questionnaire, you need

to pay attention to the traffic although the office is in a secure place.

What are the possible benefits of taking part?

The immediate benefits for taking part in this study are some Chinese snacks.

You will get more Chinese snacks if you participate in the short interview after


the questionnaire. In the long run, your participation might be useful for the

advertising plan-making for the Chinese merchants in Sheffield and maybe some

other places.

What if something goes wrong?

If there is a problem with this research, please feel free to contact the supervisor

of this research. The contact information is as follows. Dr A.D. Madden, University

of Sheffield, Information School. Email:[email protected].

Will my taking part in this project be kept confidential?

The questionnaires will be printed on paper and all the results will be recorded

anonymously. All the paper based questionnaires will be destroyed by shredder

after recording the data into computer. Meanwhile, the file which contains the

research data will be encrypted.

What will happen to the results of the research project?

This research project will be finished before 3th Sep, 2012. If this research went

well, the results will be available in the online information school publication

database in University of Sheffield website a few months later.

Who is organizing and funding the research and who do I contact for

further information?

This research is organized by Xu Xu and supervised by Dr. A. D. Madden. This

research is funded by Xu Xu. If you are interested in this research results, you can

Email Xu Xu ([email protected]) or access the results by search author

name ”Xu Xu” in the online information school publication database mentioned

above several months later..

Thank you for taking part in this project.

mailto:[email protected]


7.6 Leaflet Example

7.6.1 Front side


7.6.2 Back side


***** This is the end of this Dissertation*****

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