Keywords

1 Introduction

Live streaming is defined as “the broadcasting of real-time, live video to an audience over the internet” [1]. Its increasing popularity makes the live streaming an important evolving innovation, which has started to change the landscape of the traditional e-Commerce due to its potentials to significantly increase consumer conversion rates. Hence, a new notion of live commerce is being formed. As an example, the Chinese live-steaming market was forecast to grow US$4.4 billion in 2018 with viewer numbers topping 456 million [2]. Lately, in mainland China, Taobao Live, one of the most popular live streaming platforms, has achieved a consumer conversion rate of 32%, “meaning 320,000 products are added to customers’ carts per million views” [2]. In the United States, businesses such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Periscope etc. also started to adopt this new live streaming platform. For instance, Kohl’s, as one of the primary retail chains, has made its first live streaming held through Periscope during the New York Fashion Week, so they were able to effectively guide their remote consumers to find relevant products and looks online [3]. Despite many companies’ efforts in using live streaming to increase their user awareness and engagement of their products, it remains a challenge to gain their investment returns off these efforts [2, 3]. Therefore, it is important to understand underlying user engagement mechanisms and how effective user engagement enabled by live streaming technologies is to convert live streaming viewers to real consumers who can make immediate decisions to purchase their products online. As an initial step, this research aims to explore the user engagement mechanisms that can be uniquely identified on the live streaming platform and their impact on users’ perceived capability of product evaluation and serendipity, which in turn influence the users’ attitude and intention to use the live streaming for shopping.

2 Related Theoretical Background

Live streaming is unique in terms of its channels for sellers to engage and interact with its online users (i.e., viewers) through live product demonstrations by sellers and synchronous user interactions enabled by live streaming platform’s functionalities, such as live videos, real-time online chat, conversation and other additional capabilities to leverage two-way instantaneous communications (1) between viewers and the seller and (2) between peer online viewers on the platform. As a result, live streaming is likely to create a sense of spatial and communication immediacy, which makes viewers immerse themselves in-the-moment and not behind-the-screen [3]. Its real-time functionality on rich media communication entices users to actively interact with the seller to acquire authentic sensory information about a product through touching, seeing, hearing and following online peers’ cues on the live streaming platform, and therefore, influences users’ purchase decision making process.

In this research, we theorize the user engagement mechanism in a living steaming context through multimedia learning and information foraging theories, in that they are associated with users’ learning process to gain a product knowledge and their serendipity behavior, which we believe to further influence users’ attitude and intention to make purchase decisions on a live streaming platform.

2.1 Multimedia Learning

How users learn a product’s features demonstrated on a live streaming platform is somewhat similar to how students learn a new subject in a multimedia environment through multiple sensorimotor channels including auditory, visual, and other external cues from peers and teacher. Prior studies [4, 5] have documented that appropriate use of multiple sensory cues in multimedia can enhance learners’ spatial perceptions of objects. In a live streaming context, consumers are likely to more effectively build their respective mental representations through both auditory and visual cues delivered through static and live videos of a product, and thereafter facilitate them to learn about a product and gain heightened product knowledge. Hence, compared with traditional e-Commerce shopping platforms where consumers typically gain product information through browsing static product presentations, live streaming shopping platforms afford consumers better capability to evaluate a product through simultaneous online interactions with sellers, other consumers and products.

2.2 Information Foraging Theory

Information foraging theory is often applied to understand users’ strategies and technologies to seek, gather, appraise and acquire information based on their environmental cues [6]. In our study context, live streaming platform allows users to directly interact with the seller, view other viewers’ activities, such as what inquiries they asked, buyers’ feedback, and other users’ posting, adding products to shopping carts, or processing order and making payment in a real time. They are exposed to a very rich environment that is full of seller and peer user-generated contents in real-time live video, text message formats and beyond.

Serendipity has been widely studied in information science, marketing and various other domains. It is defined as “the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for” in Marriam-Webster online dictionary, so it represents the unexpected or unplanned valuable occurrence of events through an accidental discovery. Users’ serendipity behavior by interacting with certain technologies refers to as the extent to which a user believes that a platform triggers her/him to discover useful but unexpected products in a search process [7, 8].

Based on the multimedia learning and information foraging theories, we theorize three mechanisms of user engagement: (1) Product interactivity: Live streaming videos, which the seller uses to demonstrate product features, enable multiple channels of sensory product information disclosure, and three-way real-time interactions between seller and viewers and between peer viewers online, open up new opportunities for users to clarify the product uncertainty, so users are likely to be more effectively engaged to acquire the product features before they make purchase decisions; (2) Communication immediacy: Flexible non-verbal and verbal communication channels in real time together immerse and reinforce the user engagement; (3) Peer cues: Live streaming shopping provides users the opportunity to observe other peer users’ online shopping activities. Such observational learning can generate unexpected triggers, driving users to seek and gather more relevant information to understand their own product preferences or needs or even to be further persuaded to consider some unplanned products. Therefore, exposing a user to peers’ online shopping activities can potentially be an effective way to engage consumers due to their social influence. In this study, focusing on these three user engagement mechanisms, we proposed a research model, which is presented in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.
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Proposed research model

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3 Brief Hypothesis Development

Based upon online interactions at e-Commerce websites, users can gain actual product knowledge, which refers to “the extent to which consumers understand product information” [9, p. 478]. According to multimedia learning theory, rich product interactivity through triggering multiple sensory channels and real-time interactions among the seller and peer viewers afforded by the live streaming platform is likely to significantly reduce users’ uncertainty of a product and improve users’ capability to evaluate a product. In addition, it is also possible to entice users’ new interests to explore unplanned products that are initiated and acquired by other peer viewers, so we hypothesize:

  • H1a. There is a positive relationship between product interactivity and product evaluation.

  • H1b. There is a positive relationship between product interactivity and user serendipity.

Users are empowered to communicate product information along with the seller synchronously on a live streaming platform, and thus the live streaming platform can cause communication immediacy among the sellers and users, especially when users are immersed in an entertaining environment, associated with how the sellers strategize to promote products and attract online viewers. Communication immediacy enabled by the live streaming platform can make users feel like thrilling and you are there yourself, similar to the spatial immediacy effects by arts [10], so the live streaming can significantly mimic a real shopping environment where users can communicate easily without being constrained by the online channel. This communication immediacy is likely to positively affect users’ product evaluation and to arouse their serendipity behavior:

  • H2a. There is a positive relationship between communication immediacy and product evaluation.

  • H2b. There is a positive relationship between communication immediacy and user serendipity.

In addition to seller’s product live video demo by the seller on the live streaming platform, there are also some other live external cues based on peer user-generated contents and their real-time interactions, which are often aggregated for products and semantically depict various product features. These cues are likely to be sensed by users and therefore impact their understanding and evaluations of a product. In addition, any additional cues can trigger users’ unexpected interests in other products which are not initially planned.

  • H3a. There is a positive relationship between peer cues and product evaluation.

  • H3b. There is a positive relationship between peer cues and user serendipity.

Given the uniqueness of live streaming platform functionality, we expect the identified three user engagement mechanisms are likely to be more persuasive than the traditional e-Commerce platforms, where real-time interactions and rich sensory product information are lacking. The amount of information shared and gathered through live streaming is likely to boost sales through converting viewers to consumers who buy products online. It adds some fun entertainment features for viewers and to have real-time options to clarify complex procedures/features of a product while enabling the ways to take control of the current fan base for certain product brands. According to [11], product evaluation is likely to have a positive influence on people’s purchase intention. While users acquire more information about a product, they become more capable of evaluating their product needs and preferences to meet their psychological standards before making the order. Because of reduced product uncertainty and more confidence to evaluate certain products, the users are expected to make a sounder decision in a real-time manner, and their intentions of using the live streaming for shopping are likely to be strengthened. User serendipity behavior can also be triggered through real-time observations, interactions and synchronous user-generated contents posted by their peer viewers. For example, while the users are acquiring intended product information, they can often be enticed to some unexpected product search paths introduced by other peer users’ inquiries about other unintended products to the seller. This peer social influence is likely to foster more unexpected product discovery. We thus expect users’ product evaluation and their serenity behavior will have a positive impact to users’ attitude and intention to purchase on the live streaming platform.

  • H4a. There is a positive relationship between product evaluation and user attitude.

  • H4b. There is a positive relationship between product evaluation and user intention.

  • H5a. There is a positive relationship between user serendipity and user attitude.

  • H5b. There is a positive relationship between user serendipity and user intention.

The attitude measures how people think about their product experiences by ways of watching real-time product demonstration on the live streaming platform. The intention in our study context refers to as how likely users will use the live streaming platform for shopping in the future. Based on the theory of reasoned action, an individual’s behavioral intention is impacted by one’s attitude toward the action and one’s subjective judgement on performing the action [12]. So, we echo the following hypothesis, that has been widely proved:

  • H6. There is a positive relationship between user attitude and intention.

4 Study Design

An online survey study was conducted in mainland China. To attract user participation, every participant was led to the lucky draw after submitting their answers. The online survey consisted of two sections: First section was an introduction to live streaming e-Commerce platform and second section was the user questionnaire, which we adopted instruments that have been validated in previous research studies shown in Table 1. In total, we received 247 responses. Forty-seven were excluded because of their ages younger than 18 or missing questions, so we eventually had 200 valid user responses.

Table 1. Measurement instruments
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5 Data Analysis and Results

We used SEM modeling approach to examine our proposed research model for this study. The following Table 2 presents the measurement model analysis results, which are satisfying. Data analysis results demonstrate most of our hypotheses are significantly supported except H 2.b, meaning that communication immediacy does not impact users’ serendipity behavior (See Fig. 2).

Table 2. Measurement model analysis results
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Fig. 2.
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Proposed research model and SEM results

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6 Study Findings and Implications

In sum, this study successfully identified three user engagement mechanisms on the live streaming platform, which are useful for online businesses to develop their own strategies to effectively engage their potential consumers (i.e., viewers). We reported that the live streaming platform can effectively empower users to be more capable of evaluating whether a product meets their needs and preferences due to rich sensory product cues enabled by live streaming’s user engagement mechanisms.

We expect this study will contribute to the understanding of the current popular live streaming commerce phenomenon and raise the interests in our community to further explore more in-depth the user engagement mechanisms, and to effectively design more enjoyable user experiences, so businesses can achieve their goals to convert more online viewers to consumers, who are likely be persuaded to make immediate purchase decisions on such a platform. Future research can be expanded in multiple ways through integrating more marketing strategies and fostering more persuasive user experiences to boost online business sales and transactions in field studies with authentic online consumers and live streaming businesses.