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This study combines uses and gratifications theory and flow theory to create an integrated model that predicts continuance intention to use and satisfaction with livestreaming services.

The proposed model was empirically evaluated using survey data collected from 304 users about their perceptions of livestream services.

The results indicate that gratifications such as entertainment, informativeness and sociability were all positively related to satisfaction. The authors find that flow mediates the impact of interactivity and telepresence on satisfaction. Notably, sociability gratification and satisfaction had a significant impact on a user's intention to continue to use livestreaming services and accounted for 77% of the variance.

The study adds to the body of knowledge by demonstrating the uses and gratifications theory and flow theory in live stream services. In addition, the findings may provide useful insights for live stream services streamers and marketers.

The boom in livestreaming commerce (LSC) has brought significant changes to social interaction methods. Understanding customer engagement in LSC is critical for online sellers who try to enhance the social influence and improve marketing effectiveness of LSC. Based on the stimulus–organism–response (S–O–R) paradigm, this study aims to develop a model to investigate the effects of perceived attributes of LSC (real-time interaction, perceived proximity and perceived authenticity) on social support (informational and emotional support) and subsequent engagement.

An online survey is conducted to collect data from LSC customers, and data are analyzed using SPSS and SmartPLS.

The results indicate that informational and emotional support are positively affected by real-time interaction, perceived proximity and perceived authenticity. In turn, informational and emotional support enable and mediate the prediction of customer engagement intention in LSC.

Prior LSC studies tend to focus on the motivation influencing LSC engagement from the perspective of perceived value. This study confirms the importance of perceived attributes of LSC in driving customer engagement from the perspective of social support.

While in common English-language parlance speaking of “online celebrities” encourages the conflation of new forms of famousness with existing discourses on mass media stardom and fandom, the Mandarin Chinese term wanghong, a shorthand term for wangluo hongren (literally “person popular on the internet”), frames the enticing shores of online celebrity through the peculiar lexical domain of a grassroots popularity. The figure of the wanghong has in recent years accompanied the development of social media platforms in China, becoming a profitable profession, an inspirational role model, a morally condemnable by-product of internet economies, and in general a widely debated social phenomenon among local users. Drawing on interviews with more and less successful local online celebrities and discussions with their audiences, this chapter offers an up-to-date portrayal of the various forms of wanghong currently vying for attention on Chinese social media platforms, illustrating how popularity is crafted along with narratives of professionalism and economic aspirations intimately connected to the sociotechnical contexts of contemporary China.

This study investigates how Danmu (danmaku) technological features (DTFs) of recommendation vlogs (rec-vlogs) impact consumer experiences and decisions.

The authors adopt the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique with a sample of 422 viewers of Danmu-enabled rec-vlogs to examine the proposed model.

The DTFs positively affect consumer loyalty intentions through the mediation of social presence and immersion. Also, vlogger-product congruency significantly moderates the relationship between social presence and immersion.

With the increasing popularity of vlogs, retailers have adopted the vlog as a new marketing channel to connect with consumers. Although a growing body of studies focuses on this phenomenon, little is known about how DTFs help to increase consumer loyalty toward using rec-vlogs as product information sources. Anchored on the stimulus–organism–response framework, this study investigates how pseudo-synchronicity, Danmu-content congruency and parallelism, three DTFs used in rec-vlogs, impact consumer experiences of social presence and immersion, eventually influence the consumers' loyalty intentions toward rec-vlogs. The authors also examine whether the effect of social presence on immersion is contingent on vlogger-product congruency. These findings have implications for both researchers and practitioners to understand the effect of DTFs in the context of rec-vlogs.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the continuance usage of livestreaming commerce. The proposed antecedents of livestreaming commerce continuance usage are social presence, perceived crowdedness, need for arousal, susceptibility to informational influence, and perceived value, whilst trust in broadcasters is treated as the moderating factor.

A survey was conducted using a questionnaire designed specifically for this purpose, which was completed by 388 Malaysian consumers aged 26–40 years who have prior experience with livestreaming commerce. The authors tested the framework using the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique and complementary by performing artificial neural network (ANN) analysis.

The results indicate several significant relationships, whereby social presence, perceived crowdedness, susceptibility to informational influence, and trust in broadcasters significantly influence perceived value, whereas perceived value significantly influences continuance intention. In addition, trust in broadcasters moderates the relationship between perceived value and continuance intention.

The current study adds significantly to the body of knowledge about livestreaming by examining the direct determinants of perceived value and thus delineating how perceived value influences continuance intention. The findings yielded also illustrate the role of trust in broadcaster as the moderator of the link between perceived value and continuance intention.

Livestreaming, as a relatively new online marketing model, has generated numerous business opportunities for e-commerce and social commerce. The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what degree livestreaming content impacts online users' cognitive and emotional reactions and whether their cognitive and emotional responses affect their purchase intention.

Through the lens of regulatory focus theory (RFT) and stimulus–organism–response (S–O–R) theory, the authors empirically examine the influencing mechanisms of livestreaming on online consumers' purchase intentions. Structural equation models are used to analyze the relationships in the proposed research model.

The results of this study show that information-task fit positively affects consumers' perceived usefulness of livestreaming. Both visual effects and sociability positively affect consumers' perceived value and social presence. Furthermore, perceived usefulness and perceived joy positively affect consumers' purchase intentions in a livestreaming environment. This study’s results also demonstrate that the regulatory focus of consumers has a moderating effect on the influence of their perceived joy on shopping intentions.

This study contributes to the relevant literature by simultaneously examining the role of e-commerce platform characteristics and online consumer psychology in influencing behavioral intention. With a better understanding of their role, platform operators and sellers can refine their livestreaming marketing tools and strategies. Highlighting the interplays among external stimuli, user reactions and user motivational styles, this study contributes to mobile e-commerce literature and the broader literature on digital marketing and human–computer interaction.

The purpose of this study is to discover the uniqueness of China's online livestreaming industry and to make preliminary predictions about its future.

Providing a panoramic description of China's online livestreaming industry and a comparative analysis with other countries' online livestreaming industries.

China's online livestreaming industry is world leader in general. In terms of user size and age structure, although China has a high proportion of online livestreaming users, the proportion of anchors is not high, while the age structure of users in both China and other countries shows the characteristics of younger users. In terms of policy, the difference between China and foreign support in online livestreaming is small, but developed countries have stricter regulations.

The research in this paper has great significance in gaining an in-depth understanding of the development status and trends of China's online livestreaming industry and in designing accurate support policies.

Following the changes in consumer behavior in the hospitality industry due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Amazon launched “Explore”, an interactive livestreaming customized service that connects users with hosts worldwide, allowing them to discover a vast array of experiences from the comfort of their homes. This study aims to assess the effects of Explore on the hospitality and tourism industries.

An exploratory qualitative approach was adopted. Data was collected from 18 expert interviews and 292 online reviews on Explore.

The findings indicate that the pandemic has altered consumer behavior when it comes to experience-related venues. Within that shift, Explore was shown to have reinvented the travel industry. The major three themes extracted revolved around the following: replica of real-life touristic experiences (having the experience as if consumers were physically present), experience-bound versus output-oriented customers (those who want to explore the real experience by being physically present versus those who seek to discover a certain culture or acquire a new skill even virtually) and post-virtual experience (effects on the hospitality industry).

The study puts forth the coopetition that could emanate from the inter-relationship between the Amazon Explore platform and the hospitality industry if the two were to cooperate even beyond the context of global pandemics. Indeed, Explore has gained awareness and trial and could be a sustainable ongoing business, especially among those with financial and other types of limitations that could hinder their traveling propensity.

Although user stickiness has been studied for several years in the field of live e-commerce, little attention has been paid to the effects of streamer attributes on user stickiness in this field. Rooted in the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) theory, this study investigated how streamer attributes influence user stickiness.

The authors obtained 496 valid samples from Chinese live e-commerce users and explored the formation of user stickiness using partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Artificial neural network (ANN) was used to capture linear and non-linear relationships and analyze the normalized importance ranking of significant variables, supplementing the PLS-SEM results.

The authors found that attractiveness and similarity positively impacted parasocial interaction (PSI). Expertise and trustworthiness positively impacted perceived information quality. Moreover, streamer-brand preference mediated the relationship between PSI and user stickiness, as well as the relationship between perceived information quality and user stickiness. Compared to PLS-SEM, the predictive ability of ANN was more robust. Further, the results of PLS-SEM and ANN both showed that attractiveness was the strongest predictor of user stickiness.

This study explained how streamer attributes affect user stickiness and provided a reference value for future research on user behavior in live e-commerce. The exploration of the linear and non-linear relationships between variables based on ANN supplements existing research. Moreover, the results of this study have implications for practitioners on how to improve user stickiness and contribute to the development of the livestreaming industry.

This study examines the relationship between streamers' product descriptions, customer comments and online sales and focuses on the moderating effect of streamer–viewer relationship strength.

Between June 2021 and April 2022, the structured data of 965 livestreaming and unstructured text data of 42,956,147 characters from two major live-streaming platforms were collected for the study. Text analysis and regression analysis methods were employed for data analysis.

First, the authors' analysis reveals an inverted U-shaped relationship between comment length and product sales. Notably, comment volume and comment emotion positively influence product sales. Furthermore, the semantic richness, emotion and readability of streamers' product descriptions also positively influence product sales. Secondly, the authors find that the strength of streamer–viewer relationship weakens the positive effects of comment volume and comment emotion without moderating the inverted U-shaped effect of comment length. Lastly, the strength of streamer–viewer relationship also diminishes the positive effects of emotion, semantics and readability of streamers' product descriptions on product sales.

This study is the first to concurrently examine the direct and interactive effects of user-generated content (UGC) and marketer-generated content (MGC) on consumer purchase behaviors in livestreaming e-commerce, offering a novel perspective on individual decision-making and cue utilization in the social retail context.