Hancheng Cao is the co-author of a research paper, "You Recommend, I Buy: How and Why People Engage in Instant Messaging Based Social Commerce." A third-year PhD student in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, Han’s research interests are in computational social science, human-computer interaction and natural language processing, with a special focus on collaboration between people. In this episode, he shared his findings on the rationale behind the success of IM-based social commerce, its impact on consumers' purchasing decisions and relationships.

1:30 Introduction of Hancheng and his research area

4:15 How does human interact with the platform and the platform benefit from the user interaction?

5:58 How does IM based social commerce improve user experience?

12:00 IM based social commerce model's impact on the consumer decision-making process?

17:25 What are the key success factors of China's IM based social commerce growth?

20:51 What can be done better to improve the current IM based social commerce model?