How do live-streamers attract their consumers: insights from a multi-group analysis

Abstract

Purpose

The rapid development of e-commerce live streaming is inseparable from the important role of live-streamer. However, research exploring the impacts of live-streamers’ characteristics on customer engagement in different types of live streaming rooms remains limited. This study aims to examine the impacts of live-streamers’ characteristics (i.e. expertise, moral reputation, popularity, responsiveness) on consumer engagement in e-commerce live streaming, and verify whether there are differences in the impact of live-streamers’ characteristics on consumer experience for different types of live-streamers.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were gathered from 266 Chinese adults who have experience watching e-commerce live streaming. Partial least squares techniques were used to verify the model.

Findings

The results show that expertise, moral reputation, popularity, and responsiveness of live-streamers have positive impacts on consumer engagement through perceived trust and perceived pleasure. Moreover, through multi-group analysis, this study found that compared with enterprise live-streamers, the moral reputation of individual live-streamers exerts a stronger effect on consumers’ perceived trust, and the popularity of individual live-streamers exerts a stronger effect on consumers’ perceived pleasure. Compared with individual live-streamers, the responsiveness of enterprise live-streamers exerts a stronger effect on consumers’ perceived pleasure.

Originality/value

This study contributes to e-commerce live streaming research by categorizing live-streamers into two types: individual live-streamers and enterprise live-streamers, and verifying the specific difference in the impacts of live-streamers’ characteristics on consumer experience for the two types of live-streamers.

Citation

Xiong, J. and Li, F. (2024), "How do live-streamers attract their consumers: insights from a multi-group analysis", Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/APJML-01-2024-0017