earticle

영어

International software providers have entered China market in recent years. One typical example is MSN. As an indigenous IT products, QQ provides almost the same functions as MSN and competes with MSN for years. Market survey indicates that QQ dominates the local instance message market. Why QQ could win the battle with MSN in China market? In this paper, we investigate the detailed designs of MSN vs. QQ, focusing in particular on their privacy protection. We find that, in general, users’ privacy concern level is low in China. Users show inclination to be connected with strangers in virtual community. They may trade off certain level of privacy protection to gain the chance of visiting by strangers. Moreover, in the position of control could mitigate users’ privacy concern. Indigenous IT products, such as QQ, understand and leverage users’ behavior. By lowering privacy protection and providing various control tools, QQ successfully caters to the need of young generation in China, which is main Internet users in China. Such results shed light on how to survive in China market for international IT product providers.