While the use of emoticons in Mobile Instant Messenger (MIM) is rapidly increasing and the importance of emoticons as an additional revenue source is gradually increasing, few related studies have been conducted. We collected Korean and Chinese consumer samples represented by KakaoTalk and Weixin (WeChat) and conducted this study to find out how the social motives of using MIM emoticons affect the formation of social capital and how the social capital formed is related to purchase intentions In this study, we examine how the social motivation of using Mobile Instant Messenger (MIM) emoticons affects the formation of social capital for Korean and Chinese consumers, and how the social capital is related to purchase intention. The main results derived from the study are summarized as follows. First, in both Korea and China, only bridging social capital had a significant effect on the purchase intention of emoticons in MIM, and bonding social capital did not significantly affect the purchase intention of emoticons. Second, for Korean consumers, the motives of use such as the need for conformity, self-expression, self-concealment, and reward were all found to have a significant effect on bridging social capital, whereas for Chinese subjects, only self-concealment and reward had a significant effect on bridging social capital. Third, it was found that both for Korean and Chinese consumers, self-expression, and reward had a significant effect on bonding social capital except for self-concealment. In this study, based on the results of empirical analysis, it is presented as an important research contribution and implication that bridging social capital plays an important role in the purchase intention of emoticons in the MIM platform. It is also a major implication of this study to suggest a way to increase the bridging social capital in MIM by deriving an effective marketing strategy related to the motivation for using emoticons.