What drives sales of e-commerce live streaming? Evidence from Taobao

• Main Authors: SONG, Danyang, CHEN, Xi, GUO, Zhiling, GAO, Xin
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: e-commerce live streaming; social commerce; consumer engagement; E-Commerce
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/6755; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/7758/viewcontent/CSWIM_2021_Proceedings_guo.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Despite the rapid development of live streaming, empirical research on the driving factors of e-commerce live streaming sales, still lags. We empirically address this question by utilizing a large and unique data set from a leading e-commerce platform in the world. Our results show that product characteristics, streamer characteristics and consumer engagement are important factors that drive e-commerce live streaming sales. Interestingly, we find that newer products from small brands with lower prices benefit more from the live streaming sales. Experienced streamers who are tied to a single seller and who have more followers perform better. In addition, real-time comments are more effective than shares and likes in live streaming. Our empirical estimation shows that 1% increase in the number of real-time comments is associated with an average of 0.2891% higher sales. Our results provide marketers and streamers with important insights into delivering high-performance live streaming.