1. Introduction
Livestreaming commerce has developed into a field that promises major investment potential. Compared with traditional e-commerce, livestreaming commerce, which shows products through real-time live video, has various advantages [
1], such as timely interactions between consumers and streamers, straightforwardness, and vitality. The industry report of iMedia Research shows that the total scale of China’s livestreaming commerce industry is expected to reach RMB 2137.3 billion by 2025. Realizing the great potential of livestreaming commerce, researchers have been starting to pay attention to this field and dig into the great value of this new business model.
Several research topics could be identified from the current literature, such as pricing strategies [
2], newly launched products, sales strategies under the contexts of long vs. short cooperation between retailer and MCN [
3], manufacturers’ decisions regarding the open of livestreaming channel [
4], optimal online channel structure for firms considering livestreaming shopping [
5], impacts of streamers’ linguistic styles on sales performance [
6], as well as the product brand extension [
7]. From these streams of study, we typically realize that very interesting findings have been uncovered from prior innovative studies. However, to the best of our knowledge, little has been discussed regarding the significant role of trust in this new type of research context.
Although we may recognize that trust has been widely studied in the past two decades in information systems research [
8,
9], electronic commerce [
10,
11] as well as marketing [
12], it has to be realized that trust transfers its unique meanings varying along e-commerce context, and it is typically represented differently in different stages. Specifically, in the very early stage of e-commerce, which is called “platform-based e-commerce”, we may understand that website design signals the transfer of trust to potential consumers, such as the logo of a famous brand like Yahoo [
13] or the perceived website quality [
14]. Along with the development of e-commerce, new styles emerge when platform-based e-commerce is no longer the mainstream of e-commerce, but instead, “social-network-based commerce” is. In the new age of e-commerce, trust is typically represented by new styles, such as online review information [
15] and sale volumes [
16], where consumers’ purchasing behavior is greatly impacted by these types of information. Later, with the further development of e-commerce, the new style called “livestreaming e-commerce” came. In this focal stage of e-commerce, it is widely acknowledged that the focal information, such as the sales volume, online review volume, as well as the design of websites, do not work again. Because, in our daily life, we may realize that these types of information are not always shown in the livestreaming commerce context, but instead, a streamer’s show or live show guides potential consumers’ purchasing behavior. This leads us to propose the following questions: How does trust work in this focal context? What are the main antecedents, reviews, sales, or others? Does trust influence consumers’ final purchasing intention?
As a matter of fact, in livestreaming commerce, a streamer is regarded as the opinion leader and is usually concerned by consumers [
17]. A streamer plays a connection role between the product and the audience. The reputation of a streamer affects the audience’s perception of the product. The trust established between live audiences and the streamer is easily enhanced through the streamer’s good reputation [
18]. Therefore, to fill this significant research gap in the current literature and bring along the above questions, this study, as one of the very initial attempts, tries to uncover the important role trust plays in livestreaming commerce through the identification of its antecedents and consequences. Drawing on the cognitive-affective-conative (C-A-C) framework and the related literature, several hypotheses are proposed and tested. This study contributes to the current knowledge in the following facets. First, to the best of our knowledge, this is a very initial study exploring the significant role of trust and revealing its antecedents and consequences in the context of livestreaming commerce, thus extending the present literature. Second, although previous studies have pointed out that trust should be impacted by several factors varying alone its research context, there is little discussed in the livestreaming context, and it is scantily understood regarding the different dimensional formation. This study from both the cognitive and affective dimensions fills this gap in a complementary way. Third, as with most current studies, moderation identification is always contributable to the underlying mechanism. This study explores the livestreaming value that moderates the effects of several antecedents on streamer trust building.
The study is presented as follows. In
Section 2, we review the related literature on livestreaming commerce and the C-A-C framework.
Section 3 presents a conceptual model with hypotheses.
Section 4 presents the research methodology, model testing, and analysis results for our proof-of-concept model. Finally,
Section 5,
Section 6 and
Section 7 summarize our research contributions, limitations, and potential future research directions.
5. Discussion
As an important part of e-commerce, livestreaming has created huge benefits for livestreaming platforms, brands, streamers, and audiences. However, the streamer’s trust will reduce the audience’s willingness to buy products or generate positive word of mouth. This will harm the interests of all parties and hinder the sustainable development of livestreaming commerce [
72]. Therefore, it is of great significance to study how consumers increase their willingness to buy under the influence of streamer trust. This study adopts the C-A-C framework to explore the form of consumer-streamer to study consumers’ purchase intention in livestreaming. Through a questionnaire survey of 385 respondents under the simulation of the livestreaming scene of a professional streamer, we found that consumers’ external influence and their own internal influence can affect the audience’s emotional trust in the streamer differently, which will encourage or prevent the audience from rewarding her/him by generating positive public praise.
The empirical results verify most of our hypotheses and demonstrate the applicability of the C-A-C model in livestreaming commerce research. Firstly, the results show that streamer trust has a positive effect on purchase intention, and enhancing streamer trust is also an important and effective measure to trigger purchase intention, a finding that is consistent with past research [
20,
30,
73]. Thus, audiences in livestreaming rooms need to have a considerable degree of trust in the streamer before making the decision to purchase a product. As external influences on cognitive factors, interactivity, and product information have a positive impact on streamer trust. This means that positive interactions with streamers can increase audience trust. If audiences trust streamers, then they, by extension, trust that the streamers have the ability to introduce and evaluate products reliably, accurately reflecting the consumer’s preferences and needs [
20]. In the livestreaming process, information is the core element that drives the audience’s product purchases. The audience seeks to meet their need for information via livestreaming, but the uncertainty of product information often leads to a complex online shopping process. The reduction of information asymmetry between audiences and products reduces the likelihood that audiences will suffer financial losses due to perceived quality differences [
27]. More specific product information can increase audiences’ trust in streamers. From the perspective of internal influences on cognitive factors, personal impulses and attitudes toward livestreaming shopping also have a positive impact on streamer trust. The external and internal influences that constitute cognitive factors are also involved in a process in which the audience in the livestreaming room receives and processes information. In doing so, they build trust with the streamer, which is an effective factor, and finally arrive at a willingness to buy, which is an audience behavior that stems from cognition and affection.
Although most of the hypotheses proposed in this paper have been supported, several have not been supported. The results show that the value of livestreaming can significantly weaken the relationship between interactivity and streamer trust, and it can also significantly enhance the relationship between information and streamer trust. However, it does not significantly weaken the relationship between personal impulse and streamer trust, although this may be because the participants in this study are relatively less impulsive. We also found that livestreaming value does not significantly enhance the relationship between the attitude towards livestreaming shopping and streamer trust, which indicates that livestreaming value may not affect the impact of attitude towards livestreaming shopping on streamer trust.
6. Implications
6.1. Theoretical Contributions
Our research provides several important theoretical contributions. First, our research contributes to the literature on livestreaming commerce by developing a theoretical model that reveals how livestreaming commerce affects consumers’ purchase intentions from the perspectives of interactivity, product information, personal impulse, attitudes towards livestreaming shopping, livestreaming value, and streamer trust. The previous literature has also explored many reasons why consumers buy, including external influences [
1,
27,
29], internal influences [
25,
26,
27], and streamer trust [
21,
30]. Prior works, however, did not combine external and internal influences with streamer trust. This study, therefore, fills this gap within the context of livestreaming commerce.
Furthermore, the C-A-C framework was developed to understand the causal relationship between individual cognition, affection, and conation [
41]. Although there are studies that adopt the cognitive-affective-conative framework in the context of e-commerce [
42,
43,
44], there is currently no precedent for applying the C-A-C framework to livestreaming commerce scenarios. Thus, this research expands the application of the C-A-C framework and applies it to a new, important phenomenon. As expected, the cognition of audiences in the livestream room (i.e., internal and external influences) showed a significant impact on an individual’s affection (i.e., trust in the host), thus influencing their conation (i.e., purchase intentions). Given this connection, we believe that the C-A-C framework is a highly beneficial model for understanding the impact of individual cognitive factors on their affective, conative movements in many cases. Therefore, the C-A-C framework should be used and tested in other environments in the future.
The results and theoretical application of this research promote the theoretical development of the field of livestreaming commerce and lay the foundation for future research to enhance our understanding of consumer behavior in livestreaming shopping.
6.2. Practical Significance
The study also provides some actionable guidelines for practitioners in livestreaming commerce. Firstly, as an opinion leader and source of information, streamers should pay attention to building trust with their audiences during the livestream process, as streamer trust is positively associated with purchase intention. Streamers should also interact more with their audience in the livestream rooms, which affects their trust relationship with viewers. Moreover, the streamer should respond to the audience’s questions in a timely fashion, show the audience goods in a thorough way and provide specific product information. This can effectively reduce audiences’ doubts about the product and increase their trust in the streamer. At the same time, managers should systematically train streamers to improve their skills in terms of showcasing goods in a livestream and enhancing their interactions with the audience. Trust in the streamer will directly transfer to the product. It is, therefore, recommended that managers pay attention to the streamers with a good reputation and a high level of trust with their audience, as these individuals can foster a positive shopping experience and attract more consumers.
Moreover, for consumers, there is a noteworthy emotion (i.e., personal impulse) when purchasing goods in a livestream room. Our research shows that personal impulse can have a positive effect on streamer trust, which may lead to consumer purchasing behavior. The ability of consumers to control personal impulses is an effective way to avoid impulse purchases that can lead to wasted money. At the same time, consumers’ attitudes towards livestreaming shopping also are positively associated with the streamer’s trust, and managers should properly guide the streamer in terms of how to interact correctly with their audience. Doing so will help improve the audience’s positive attitude toward the livestreaming and increase their trust in the streamer.
Finally, we found that while the value of livestreaming can significantly enhance the relationship between information and streamer trust, it can also significantly weaken the relationship between interactivity and streamer trust. Thus, the streamer should still focus on the product information and should display the item in a way that helps the audience experience it as they would in person.
7. Conclusions
This study shows that there is a dynamic mechanism between consumers and streamers. The purchase behavior of consumers in the livestream room is the process from cognition to affection and then to conation. It is the behavior of consumers in the livestream room based on cognition and affection. Our research shows that streamer trust provides an opportunity for the generation of purchase intention, which is consistent with Zhao’s research conclusion [
74]. However, consumers’ cognitive factors are also the most important. On the basis of the C-A-C framework, cognitive factors directly affect affectional factors, and consumers’ external and internal influences should also be paid attention to.
However, the current research has some limitations. Firstly, our research subjects are college students whose ages are concentrated in the 18–25 years old range. Future research will increase the age diversity among subjects. Furthermore, our research background is limited to livestreaming commerce; future research should adjust and modify the existing research model and apply it to other scenarios. Second, our sample is derived from Chinese livestreaming commerce participants, which may limit the findings. Because China’s livestreaming commerce is more developed than other countries, most of the relevant research in this field is also focused on the Chinese context.
Nevertheless, future studies could consider livestreaming users in other countries to verify whether the current research model has good external validity. The important role of digital technology in purchase intention should also be valued.