However, WeChat's rapidly increasing international presence offers another source of sustainable competitive advantage. More than 100 million people regularly use WeChat from outside the Chinese mainland. Despite ambitious plans and recent announcements, the Alibaba brand has yet to make any significant international inroads in its quest to "go global".

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WeChat's international expansion is bound to bring with an increased global brand awareness and a healthy measure of brand credibility.

But, above all, it is the WeChat brand image that results from social networking that will provide an enormous association opportunity.

Integrating the technology to allow online payments and other e-commerce applications with the current messaging service should not prove too difficult, but if brand integration is achieved at the same time, then WeChat and Tencent could even topple the mighty Alibaba.

For this to take place, it is clear that Tencent needs to "stretch" the emotional brand image that WeChat has established in the minds of its regular users and not attempt to develop a separate online payment product brand.

In future, the WeChat brand should also be positioned as an "umbrella" brand that stretches across further additions to the suite of applications offered by Tencent.

At a time when many Chinese companies are seeking to improve their competitiveness with more emotionally positioned brands both domestically and internationally, WeChat sets a perfect example of just how powerful and potentially sustainable a competitive advantage this set of values could provide.

The author is a visiting professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing and a senior lecturer of marketing at Southampton Solent University's School of Business. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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