Wenqian Fu
ABSTRACT
Live streaming retailing, a new form of e-commerce equipped with live streams, brings more interactive and vivid shopping experiences to consumers. The overall scale of China's live streaming retailing was estimated to reach 1,050 billion RMB in 2020 [1]. As live streaming retailing flourishes, answers to the following questions are crucial for brands, retailers, and streamers: Who like live streaming retailing? What aspects do consumers care about? What marketing strategies should retailers and streamers use to attract consumers? Prior researches mainly explore the motivations of consumers’ watching and engagement behaviors in live streams from the perspective of the technology acceptance and consumers’ social needs. This study further explores consumers’ actual purchasing behaviors in the context of live streaming retailing and brings marketing strategies into consideration. A questionnaire survey towards 222 consumers who watch Taobao live streams frequently and an interview to a streamer with over 500,000 fans on Taobao are conducted to solve the above three questions. First, this paper identifies the demographic factors contributing to consumers’ watching and purchasing behaviors in live streams. Second, this paper presents further analysis of consumers’ diverse behaviors in the clothing and beauty products categories: Beauty product lovers care about the streamers’ popularity the most, and clothing product lovers rank price as the number one factor. Third, this paper studies the marketing strategies of streamers. Limited discounts appear to be the most effective way to increase consumers’ watching and purchasing behaviors. These findings not only give insight into better understanding how live streaming retailing affects consumer choices but also help brands and retailers leverage this new business model more effectively.
- KPMG & AliResearch. 2020. A trillion-dollar market for live streaming retailing. (October 2020). Retrieved October 16, 2020 from http://www.199it.com/archives/1135645.htmlGoogle Scholar
- Xinhua. 2021. China's online retail sales up 10% in 2020. (3 February 2021). Retrieved February 3, 2021 from http://english.www.gov.cn/archive/statistics/202102/03/content_WS601a33d3c6d0f725769450b4.htmlGoogle Scholar
- Evelyn Cheng. 2020. China offers glimpse into post-coronavirus retail industry, Bain report says. (20 August 2020). Retrieved August 20, 2020 from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/20/china-offers-glimpse-into-post-coronavirus-retail-industry-bain-report-says.html?&qsearchterm=China20livestreamingGoogle Scholar
- AliResearch. 2020. The "2020 Taobao Live New Economy Report" was released, and the annual GMV of 177 hosts exceeded 100 million. (31 March 2020). Retrieved March 31, 2020 from https://www.sohu.com/a/384677398_384789Google Scholar
- Chia-Chen Chen and Yi-Chen Lin. 2018. What drives live-stream usage intention? The perspectives of flow, entertainment, social interaction, and endorsement. Telematics and Informatics 35, 1 (April 2018), 293–303. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2017.12.003Google ScholarCross Ref
- Oliver L. Haimson and John C. Tang. 2017. What makes live events engaging on Facebook Live, Periscope, and Snapchat. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’17). ACM, Denver Colorado USA, 48–60. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025642Google ScholarDigital Library
- Hong Zhang, Yaobin Lu, Sumeet Gupta, and Ling Zhao. 2014. What motivates customers to participate in social commerce? The impact of technological environments and virtual customer experiences. Information & Management 51, 8 (December 2014), 1017–1030. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2014.07.005Google ScholarDigital Library
- Mehrabian Albert and James A. Russell. 1974. The Basic Emotional Impact of Environments. Perceptual and Motor Skills 38, 1 (February 1974), 283–301. DOI:https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.1974.38.1.283.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Nick Hajli. 2015. Social commerce constructs and consumer's intention to buy. International Journal of Information Management (2015), 9. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2014.12.005Google ScholarDigital Library
- Apiradee Wongkitrungrueng and Nuttapol Assarut. 2020. The role of live streaming in building consumer trust and engagement with social commerce sellers. Journal of Business Research 117, (September 2020), 543–556. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.08.032Google ScholarCross Ref
- Zhicong Lu, Haijun Xia, Seongkook Heo, and Daniel Wigdor. 2018. You watch, you give and you engage: A study of live streaming practices in China. (2018), 13. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174040Google ScholarDigital Library
- Albert Bandura and David C McClelland. 1977. Social learning theory. Englewood cliffs Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
- Aihui Chen, Yaobin Lu, and Bin Wang. 2017. Customers’ purchase decision-making process in social commerce- A social learning perspective. International Journal of Information Management 37, 6 (2017),627-638. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2017.05.001Google ScholarDigital Library
- Mark S Granovetter. 1973. The strength of weak ties. American journal of sociology 78, 6 (1973), 1360–1380.Google Scholar
- Xueyan Dong and Tienan Wang. 2018. Social tie formation in Chinese online social commerce- The role of IT affordances. International Journal of Information Management 42, June (2018), 49-64. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2018.06.002Google ScholarCross Ref
- Thomas E Ruggiero. 2000. Uses and gratifications theory in the 21st century. Mass communication & society 3, 1 (2000), 3–37. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327825MCS0301_02Google ScholarCross Ref
- Jie Cai and Donghee Yvette Wohn. Live streaming commerce: Uses and gratifications approach to understanding consumers’ motivations. In Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS). Hawaii, 10. DOI:10.24251/HICSS.2019.307Google ScholarCross Ref
- Kai Kang, Jinxuan Lu, Lingyun Guo, and Wenlu Li. 2021. The dynamic effect of interactivity on customer engagement behavior through tie strength: Evidence from live streaming commerce platforms. International Journal of Information Management 56, (February 2021), 102251. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2020.102251Google ScholarDigital Library
- Jyun-Cheng Wang and Ching-Hui Chang. 2013. How online social ties and product-related risks influence purchase intentions: A Facebook experiment. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 12, 5 (September 2013), 337–346. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.elerap.2013.03.003Google ScholarDigital Library
- Jie Cai, Donghee Yvette Wohn, Ankit Mittal, and Dhanush Sureshbabu. 2018. Utilitarian and hedonic motivations for live streaming shopping. In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for TV and Online Video (TVX ’18), ACM, SEOUL Republic of Korea, 81–88. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3210825.3210837Google ScholarDigital Library
- Haoyan Sun, Ming Fan, and Yong Tan. 2020. An empirical analysis of seller advertising strategies in an online marketplace. Information Systems Research 31, 1 (March 2020), 37–56. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2019.0874Google ScholarDigital Library
- Dmitri Kuksov and Chenxi Liao. 2019. Opinion leaders and product variety. Marketing Science 38, 5 (September 2019), 812–834. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2019.1179Google ScholarDigital Library
- Rakesh Mallipeddi, Subodha Kumar, Chelliah Sriskandarajah, and Yunxia Zhu. A framework for analyzing influencer marketing in social networks: Selection and scheduling of influencers. SSRN Electronic Journal 72. DOI:10.2139/ssrn.3255198Google ScholarCross Ref
- wjx. It's not just questionnaires/online exams. Retrieved from https://www.wjx.cn/Google Scholar
Recommendations
Endogeneity of store attributes in heterogeneous store-level sales response models
Retailing firms as a rule decide on store attributes (e.g., store size) considering an assessment of future sales of these stores. Typically, managers allocate better or more equipment to stores for which they expect higher sales. Models which ignore ...
How Live Streaming Changes Shopping Decisions in E-commerce: A Study of Live Streaming Commerce
AbstractLive Streaming Commerce (LSC) is proliferating in China and gaining traction worldwide. LSC is an e-commerce service where sellers communicate with consumers through live streaming while consumers can place orders within the same system. Despite ...
Managing Consumer Returns in a Competitive Environment
This paper investigates the pricing and restocking fee decisions of two competing firms selling horizontally differentiated products. We model a duopoly facing consumers who have heterogeneous tastes for the products and who must experience a product ...
Comments