  As an emerging business phenomenon especially in China, instant messaging
(IM) based social commerce is growing increasingly popular, attracting hundreds
of millions of users and is becoming one important way where people make
everyday purchases. Such platforms embed shopping experiences within IM apps,
e.g., WeChat, WhatsApp, where real-world friends post and recommend products
from the platforms in IM group chats and quite often form lasting
recommending/buying relationships. How and why do users engage in IM based
social commerce? Do such platforms create novel experiences that are distinct
from prior commerce? And do these platforms bring changes to user social lives
and relationships? To shed light on these questions, we launched a qualitative
study where we carried out semi-structured interviews on 12 instant messaging
based social commerce users in China. We showed that IM based social commerce:
1) enables more reachable, cost-reducing, and immersive user shopping
experience, 2) shapes user decision-making process in shopping through
pre-existing social relationship, mutual trust, shared identity, and community
norm, and 3) creates novel social interactions, which can contribute to new tie
formation while maintaining existing social relationships. We demonstrate that
all these unique aspects link closely to the characteristics of IM platforms,
as well as the coupling of user social and economic lives under such business
model. Our study provides important research and design implications for social
commerce, and decentralized, trusted socio-technical systems in general.
