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Qudian Inc is a Chinese customer credit firm listed on the New York Exchange. It mainly offers customers credit and merchandise credit products to young people in China.

Market
Qudian targets customers who are not considered credit worthy by Chinese banks. It was founded in 2014. It was listed in NYSE in 2017 and in 2018 its stock price is 17 US$. Its market cap is around US$ 5.6 billion(Yahoo Finance, 2018).

The payment term of its credit short products is short, ranging from few weeks to months, and the annualized interest rate of its credit products are as high as 36% (Flannery, 2017). Qudian has a strong dependence on Alipay for businesses and Alipay is China’s biggest third-party payment platform. Unlike conventional financial institutions having a big number of physical outlets, all the businesses of Qudian is completed online. Thus, digital marketing strategy is critical for its success. This article covers its key aspects of its digital marketing strategy.

Target customers
The main customers are young Chinese customers aged from 18 to 30.These customers are usually college students and graduates with a few years working experience.They do not have too much deposits and students usually depends on parents for living fees.However,they are highly acceptive of new things and are willing to improve life quality via credit-based consumption.They are willing to buy latest electronics products such as smartphones and fashionable cloths.They like travel around with friends. They are familiar with digital technologies, and they are willing to try out new apps such as Qudian.They are usually not financially smart.

Channels of reaching customers online
The customers of Qudian are mainly reached, captured and maintained online. Customers are able to enter into deals with Qudian via its official website and smartphone app, which could be downloaded at Apple’s Appstore and various Android app stores. The internet also offers advertising links for directing customers to Qudian’s website and apps. The official website of it is http://www.qufenqi.com/.

Social media marketing
Social media marketing Qudian has developed official accounts in China’s dominant social media, such as Sina Weibo and WeChat. This is intended to attract, engage and retain customers. Following the value of Qudian which are fast servicees, fast to accommodate changes,unity,creativity,and fair, they are also important channels for Qudian’s public relationship efforts. The official Sina Weibo of Qudian is at https://weibo.com/u/5974911176. The image below shows the introduction of one of Qudian’s official account at WeChat. This image is a screenshot taken by the author of this page,and the copyright belong to Wechat.

Traffic building
The biggest and major customer sources for Qudian is Alipay. When customers are paying with Alipay, if customers want to pay with merchandise credit, Alipay presents Qudian as a choice for customers. what is more, it uses Search Engine Optimization. When a customer searches for Cash Credit with Baidu, Qudian will be returned as a first result. Moreover, it is easy to quickly enter the link of Qudian official website to download apps for choosing Qudian's e-commerce credit products.

e-CRM
Qudian seems not doing so well at e-CRM. With so many customers across China, Qudian does not have a strong reputation in customer relationship management. The CEO and founder of Qudian failed to offer effective reply to criticism over the business model of Qudian(Xie and Yap, 2017) .Especially，whether cash credits equal usury and how to solve internet fraud of cash credits.

Ethical issues
Qudian is criticized for targeting college students since they usually depend on parents. Qudian lures college students to engage in unnecessary consumption and thus it is a moral disgrace(Wang, 2017). Local Chinese media questions the unethical business model of Qudian(Tech Node, 2017). Qudian is criticized of allowing low-income groups with low self-discipline to access cash credit with high default rate(Xie and Yap, 2017).

Fxiong (talk) 17:22, 10 March 2018 (UTC)