Live Streaming E-Commerce: Comparison
View Latest Version
Please note this is a comparison between Version 2 by Catherine Yang and Version 1 by mingwei li.

The prevalence of live streaming has driven a boom in e-commerce activities, namely live streaming e-commerce. This new e-commerce mode uses live streaming to engage customers on e-commerce platforms, where broadcasters leverage the new medium as a direct source for online sales. In typical live streaming e-commerce, the broadcaster can create and deliver real-time video to the customers. The broadcaster can engage potential audiences to join the live stream to consume the content. For example, the broadcasters can talk about the last beauty trend, introduce the product, and try on different items for the viewers. During the content consumption process, the viewers can also ask questions about the products, chat with the broadcaster and other viewers via text, and even send a virtual gift to their appreciated broadcasters.

  • live streaming e-commerce
  • social presence
  • Online Impulse Buying

1. Live Streaming E-Commerce

Live streaming is a type of user-generated content [1]. It allows people to stream live content, such as singing, dancing, or playing video games [2]. In the beginning, the live streaming platforms are mainly focused on gaming and entertainment. With its development, it also boosts its fusion with market campaigns, thus the rise in live streaming e-commerce [3]. With the evolution of live streaming e-commerce, there are two main types: e-commerce sites with live streaming features, and social network platforms with e-commerce activities [27][4]. The former indicates that live streaming features as an alternative way to present products or services that are embedded into the e-commerce website [1,3][1][3]. Some examples include Amazon Live and Taobao Live, and Taobao live is one of the e-commerce giants in China, while the latter indicates that e-commerce activities are embedded into social network platforms or short video platforms [28][5], for example, Facebook Live or YouTube Live. Some Chinese short video platforms, such as Douyin, also incorporate e-commerce activities into their platform.
Live streaming e-commerce is more likely to induce customers’ impulse buying behaviors than traditional website e-commerce for the following reasons. First, in the traditional e-commerce website, interactive activities mainly occur between the customer and the website features [29][6]. However, with the advantage of digital technologies, broadcasters can upload real-time video content and present the products from different perspectives in live streaming e-commerce. The traditional customer–website interaction has shifted to the interactive activities between broadcasters and customers or among different customers in live streaming e-commerce [9,29][6][7]. Second, live streaming e-commerce can foster a better sociable and more authentic experience for customers than a traditional e-commerce website [10,30][8][9]. Broadcasters in live streaming can present and provide detailed information of the products or try on the products (e.g., cosmetics and clothes). The customers can also receive real-time feedback from broadcasters in live streaming e-commerce. Conversely, viewers in the live stream can also interact with each other to share shopping experiences by sending texts in the chatbox. Therefore, live streaming e-commerce can foster a more interactive, authentic, and visual shopping experience, which attracts more potential customers and improves the customer’s impulse buying rate.
With the development of live streaming e-commerce, growing attention has been paid to this emerging topic. However, the current research efforts have mainly focused on customer engagement and purchase intention in live streaming e-commerce [3,10,30][3][8][9]; impulse buying as a large portion of sales in e-commerce gains relatively less attention compared with current studies. In the following section, we review the literature related to online impulse buying.

2. Online Impulse Buying

Online impulse buying can be defined as “a purchase that is unplanned, the result of an exposure to a stimulus, and decided on the spot” [12][10]. Some recent studies have provided a more extensive conceptualization in that impulse buying is “a process–outcome mechanism within the domain of an individual–psychological approach that occurs when a consumer experiences a sudden, often persistent urge to buy something immediately” [31,32][11][12]. Such impulse buying occurs after experiencing an urge to buy and may stimulate emotional conflict [11,26][13][14]. Impulse buying can be further divided into four different types: pure impulse buying, reminder impulse buying, suggestion impulse buying, and planned impulse buying [33,34][15][16]. Most current studies adopted the pure impulse buying proposed by Beatty and Ferrell [11][13], which was usually measured using survey questionnaires. In our research, we used three items to operationalize online impulse buying.
With the progress of live streaming e-commerce and its application, online impulse buying is common among customers [31,35,36][11][17][18]. First, previous live streaming studies have mainly focused on factors that influence customer impulse buying, such as social presence, customer trust, flow state, and IT affordance. For example, Ming et al. [14][19] investigated how presence influences customer impulse buying in the context of live streaming commerce. They found that social presence influences customer flow state and trust, thus causing impulse buying. Sun et al. [10][8] investigated how live streaming influences customers’ purchase intention in social commerce. They found that visibility affordance, meta-voicing affordance, and guidance shopping affordance can positively influence customer purchase intention through live streaming engagement. Second, interactive activities in live streaming induce consumers to make a purchase [29][6]. For example, Wongkitrungrueng et al. [37][20] indicated that the interactive activities among live broadcasters and audiences and the authentic presentation of products can easily induce customer buying behavior. Third, the current studies also investigated the attractiveness of the live streamer, the expertise of the live streamer, and the live streaming purchase convenience on impulse buying responses [38,39][21][22].

3. Social Presence

Social presence refers to the “degree of salience of the other person in the interaction and the consequent salience of the interpersonal relationships” [40][23]. The concept of social presence originates from the field of social psychology and describes the degree to which individuals perceive the presence of participation from the use of telecommunications [41][24]. It was first used in the settings of mediated communication and then extended to information and communication technology (ICT) research to explain the social aspect of technology [42][25]. With the internet becoming a critical retailing channel, the concept of social presence, as a virtual experience, has been widely used to study customer behavior in an ICT-enabled virtual environment, such as ICT-mediated communication, online e-commerce, social media e-commerce, and live streaming e-commerce [19,23,24][26][27][28].
Social presence plays an important role in the online shopping context. Currently, social presence has often measured the warmth of media or human feeling of sociability from ICT [24][28]. However, this one-dimensional conceptualization of social presence might not be suitable in live streaming e-commerce, because customers not only use live streaming features to interact with the broadcaster but also to interact with other viewers in the virtual room. Thus, a multi-dimensional conceptualization may be more suitable in the context of live streaming e-commerce. This multi-dimension conceptualization aligns well with the one dimension for considering social presence as the subjective quality of the medium, which makes the interactions more social and salient. Therefore, we conceptualize  the social presence in live streaming e-commerce from three dimensions was conceptualized: the social presence of the broadcaster, the social presence of viewers, and the social presence of live streaming e-commerce.
The social presence of the broadcaster refers to the extent to which customers perceive the direct interaction with the broadcaster in live streaming [14,24][19][28]. The live streaming room is a virtual world, the interaction between broadcasters and viewers transcends time and space. The live broadcasters can display products in detail, interact with the audiences, and offer them personalized service in this virtual space in real time [37][20]. Therefore, live streaming commerce has a better sense of social presence. For example, Guo et al. [43][29] used the concept of the broadcasters’ screen presence to investigate the factors that influence customer participation behavior in the context of mobile live streaming. They found that the customer commerce behaviors are determined by broadcasters’ screen presence, especially the facial and hand appearances.
The social presence of viewers refers to the extent to which customers perceive the presence of other customers in the live streaming [14][19]. The chatbox feature in live streaming e-commerce can also increase the social presence through interaction with other viewers in the virtual room because the interactions among viewers can make online shopping more social. Conversely, consumers can share information about products in the live stream, and word-of-mouth valence from other viewers can play an informative role for customers to better know the products and experience others’ consumption.
The social presence of live streaming refers to the live streaming’s capability to convey a feeling of human contact, sociability, warmness, and sensitivity [3]. In traditional online shopping, consumers can only see some pictures of the products or text descriptions of the products from sellers [44][30]. While live streaming e-commerce allows audiences to watch video streams in real time, this shopping experience can enhance the sense of sociality, sensitivity, and human contact through communication using voice. For example, Shen and Khalifa [25][31] indicated that when the customer experiences a sense of social presence in computer-mediated interaction, the experience will reduce the distance between products and customers, thus fueling impulse buying on the internet.

4. Pleasure and Arousal

Mehrabian and Russell [22][32] indicated that dimensional emotional states can be divided into two dimensions: pleasure/displeasure and arousal/sleepiness. Pleasure refers to the degree to which individuals feel happy, joyful, or satisfied. Arousal refers to the degree to which individuals feel stimulated, excited, or alert [22][32]. Prior empirical evidence shows that the emotional state is the main driver of impulse behavior [25][31]. Therefore, the dimensional emotional state has also been widely applied in the online and offline shopping contexts to investigate how environmental and atmospheric cues influence the consumer’s online behaviors. For example, Hsieh et al. [45][33] investigated the effect of pleasure and arousal in customer-brand relationship building. Liao et al. [46][34] also indicated that the presentation mode and product type can increase consumers’ pleasure and arousal, inducing impulse buying in the traditional online shopping industry.

References

  1. Hu, M.; Chaudhry, S.S. Enhancing consumer engagement in e-commerce live streaming via relational bonds. Internet Res. Electron. Netw. Appl. Policy 2020, 30, 1019–1041.
  2. Lin, Y.; Yao, D.; Chen, X. Happiness begets money: Emotion and engagement in live streaming. J. Mark. Res. 2021, 58, 417–438.
  3. Lu, B.; Chen, Z. Live Streaming Commerce and Consumers’ Purchase Intention: An Uncertainty Reduction Perspective. Inf. Manag. 2021, 58, 103509.
  4. Cai, J.; Wohn, D.Y.; Mittal, A.; Sureshbabu, D. Utilitarian and hedonic motivations for live streaming shopping. In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for TV and Online Video, Aveiro, Portugal, 22–24 June 2018; pp. 81–88.
  5. Xu, X.; Wu, J.-H.; Li, Q. What drives consumer shopping behavior in live streaming commerce? J. Electron. Commer. Res. 2020, 21, 144–167.
  6. Xue, J.; Liang, X.; Xie, T.; Wang, H. See now, act now: How to interact with customers to enhance social commerce engagement? Inf. Manag. 2020, 57, 103324.
  7. Wongkitrungrueng, A.; Dehouche, N.; Assarut, N. Live streaming commerce from the sellers’ perspective: Implications for online relationship marketing. J. Mark. Manag. 2020, 36, 488–518.
  8. Sun, Y.; Shao, X.; Li, X.; Guo, Y.; Nie, K. How live streaming influences purchase intentions in social commerce: An IT affordance perspective. Electron. Commer. Res. Appl. 2019, 37, 100886.
  9. Kang, K.; Lu, J.; Guo, L.; Li, W. The dynamic effect of interactivity on customer engagement behavior through tie strength: Evidence from live streaming commerce platforms. Int. J. Inf. Manag. 2021, 56, 102251.
  10. Piron, F. Defining Impulse Purchasing. Adv. Consum. Res. 1991, 18, 509–514.
  11. Chan, T.K.; Cheung, C.M.; Lee, Z.W. The state of online impulse-buying research: A literature analysis. Inf. Manag. 2017, 54, 204–217.
  12. Wells, J.D.; Parboteeah, V.; Valacich, J.S. Online impulse buying: Understanding the interplay between consumer impulsiveness and website quality. J. Assoc. Inf. Syst. 2011, 12, 32–56.
  13. Beatty, S.E.; Ferrell, M.E. Impulse buying: Modeling its precursors. J. Retail. 1998, 74, 169–191.
  14. Rook, D.W. The buying impulse. J. Consum. Res. 1987, 14, 189–199.
  15. Çakanlar, A.; Nguyen, T. The influence of culture on impulse buying. J. Consum. Mark. 2019, 36, 12–23.
  16. Stern, H. The significance of impulse buying today. J. Mark. 1962, 26, 59–62.
  17. Iyer, G.R.; Blut, M.; Xiao, S.H.; Grewal, D. Impulse buying: A meta-analytic review. J. Acad. Mark. Sci. 2020, 48, 384–404.
  18. Xz, A.; Jm, A.; Feng, Y.A.; Xg, B. Understanding impulse buying in mobile commerce: An investigation into hedonic and utilitarian browsing. Int. J. Inf. Manag. 2019, 48, 151–160.
  19. Ming, J.; Jianqiu, Z.; Bilal, M.; Akram, U.; Fan, M. How social presence influences impulse buying behavior in live streaming commerce? The role of SOR theory. Int. J. Web Inf. Syst. 2021, 17, 300–320.
  20. Wongkitrungrueng, A.; Assarut, N. The role of live streaming in building consumer trust and engagement with social commerce sellers. J. Bus. Res. 2020, 117, 543–556.
  21. Lee, C.-H.; Chen, C.-W. Impulse buying behaviors in live streaming commerce based on the stimulus-organism-response framework. Information 2021, 12, 241.
  22. Yin, S. A Study on the Influence of E-commerce Live Streaming on Consumer’s Purchase Intentions in Mobile Internet. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Copenhagen, Denmark, 19–24 July 2020; pp. 720–732.
  23. Parker, E.B.; Short, J.; Williams, E.; Christie, B. The Social Psychology of Telecommunications. Contemp. Sociol. 1976, 7, 32.
  24. Tu, C.-H. On-line learning migration: From social learning theory to social presence theory in a CMC environment. J. Netw. Comput. Appl. 2000, 23, 27–37.
  25. Osei-Frimpong, K.; McLean, G. Examining online social brand engagement: A social presence theory perspective. Technol. Forecast. Soc. Chang. 2018, 128, 10–21.
  26. Johnson, E.K.; Hong, S.C. Instagramming Social Presence: A Test of Social Presence Theory and Heuristic Cues on Instagram Sponsored Posts. Int. J. Bus. Commun. 2020, 2329488420944462.
  27. Song, J.; Moon, H.; Kim, M. When do customers engage in brand pages? Effects of social presence. Int. J. Contemp. Hosp. Manag. 2019, 31, 3627–3645.
  28. Lu, B.; Fan, W.; Zhou, M. Social presence, trust, and social commerce purchase intention: An empirical research. Comput. Hum. Behav. 2016, 56, 225–237.
  29. Guo, Y.; Goh, K.Y.; Ragab Sayed, M. Mobile live streaming: The roles of broadcasters’ screen presence and dynamic emotions in viewership engagement. In Proceedings of the ICIS Proceedings, Munich, Germany, 15–18 December 2019.
  30. Jiang, C.; Rashid, R.M.; Wang, J. Investigating the role of social presence dimensions and information support on consumers’ trust and shopping intentions. J. Retail. Consum. Serv. 2019, 51, 263–270.
  31. Shen, K.N.; Khalifa, M. System design effects on online impulse buying. Internet Res. Electron. Netw. Appl. Policy 2012, 22, 396–425.
  32. Mehrabian, A.; Russell, J.A. An Approach to Environmental Psychology; MIT Press: Cambridge, UK, 1974.
  33. Hsieh, S.H.; Lee, C.T.; Tseng, T.H. Branded app atmospherics: Examining the effect of pleasure–arousal–dominance in brand relationship building. J. Retail. Consum. Serv. 2021, 60, 102482.
  34. Liao, C.; To, P.-L.; Wong, Y.-C.; Palvia, P.; Kakhki, M.D. The impact of presentation mode and product type on online impulse buying decisions. J. Electron. Commer. Res. 2016, 17, 153–168.
More
© Text is available under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Feedback