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Marketplace for Choice and Independence: Young Chinese's Social Commerce Practices onWeChat

Abstract:

In recent years, journalists report that many young Chinese students studying abroad use online technologies to resell overseas products to customers in China. One of the technologies these young people use is WeChat, the most popular mobile social platform in China. We sought to gain a formative understanding of young Chinese's social commerce practices of buying and selling on WeChat. We interviewed 15 young people in Beijing and Shenzhen about their buying and selling practices on WeChat and their motivations to participate in these practices. Participants considered WeChat convenient, ubiquitous, good for leveraging social relationships, and easy to start new businesses. WeChat supports young people in earning money and exploring their future, which in turn helps them gain autonomy from their parents. We discuss learnings from this study to shed light on youth's technology use, social commerce, and technology design under the context of China.