1. Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed offline mass shopping to potential risks. In recent years, online shopping has displayed rapid growth with advances in online shopping and logistics systems. Nevertheless, a large number of homogeneous suppliers in online shopping amplify the cost of consumer consumption. Thus, it has become a trend for consumers to choose recommended products in live e-commerce to decrease their time cost; this phenomenon is also highly prominent in China. Based on the Ecological Report of Live E-Commerce in China 2020, GMV of live e-commerce in China (e.g., Taobao, Kuaishou, and TikTok) increased radically in 2017–2019. In 2019, the turnover of live e-commerce reached 451.29 billion yuan, demonstrating a 200.4% year-on-year growth. Nevertheless, even in the context of rapid growth, live e-commerce accounts for 4.5% of the total scale of online shopping only, and there remains considerable growth room for live e-commerce.
Live e-commerce is a shopping mode where goods are endorsed to consumers and inquiries are responded through real-time videos, with the assistance of various live broadcasting platforms [
1]. Compared with offline shopping and traditional online shopping, e-commerce shopping has both similarities and significant differences regarding the purchasing process. Unlike traditional online shopping, live e-commerce materializes a transition from pictures to videos, and the highly visualized interface increases the social presence of consumers [
2]. Meanwhile, live broadcast sans clips facilitates consumers to systematically attain all information of goods, thereby enhancing their trust [
3]. Contrary to traditional online shopping, live e-commerce can realize real-time one-to-many high-intensity interactions by virtue of developments in live broadcasting technology [
4], thereby augmenting consumers’ intimacy and satisfaction with target goods [
5]. The hosts, the main executors of live streaming, carry out a new type of online sales with the characteristics of promoting consumer participation and purchase [
6], and can also be called streamers or broadcasters. Studies of the hosts that execute live e-commerce primarily includes two dimensions—the charm of the host and the trust in the host. First, the interaction between consumers and the host in live broadcasting can stimulate impulsive consumption [
7]. Thus, hosts can be primarily categorized into stars and online hosts (usually the Key Opinion Leader, Hereinafter referred to as KOL). Stars have huge popularity and strong fan appeal, whereas KOL host has discrete personal characteristics and professional skills in vertical fields. Alternatively, KOL hosts can offer a professional presentation of goods to customers based on their understanding [
6]. Furthermore, all hosts should be credible and professional [
8] so that they can effectively communicate with consumers and influence their purchase intention [
9]. In order to make it easier to understand, the present paper gives a common e-commerce live steaming page in Taobao and marks the main elements (see
Figure 1 for details).
As sociality is a crucial feature of consumer shopping, online shopping cannot directly offer a strong social interaction experience, and the social presence of online consumption is characteristically lower than offline consumption [
10]. Nevertheless, based on the mechanism of social presence (control factors, reality factors, dispersive factors, and sensory factors), the sense of presence [
11] could be decreased by eliminating these factors if live e-commerce can replicate the real world, and users’ behaviors are influenced by physical presence. Owing to exhaustive research of consumers’ online consumption experience, studies have introduced flow experience theories to elucidate consumer behaviors in online shopping. Flow experience exerts a direct positive impact on consumers’ consumption intention [
12], which is reflected chiefly in cognition [
13], attitude [
14], intention [
15], and behavior [
16]. Compared with offline shopping, online consumers hold a stronger position in the purchasing process because of relatively low switching costs, stringent requirements, and utilitarian nature. Thus, the loyalty of online consumers is typically low [
17]. Some studies highlighted that the involvement exerts a significant regulating effect on the interaction between products or brands and consumers [
18]. Hence, consumers’ involvement (and consumers’ focus on live broadcasting) is a key regulator.
Readers should refer to [
19] for the way to conduct research. In order to analyze the influencing factors of the purchase intention during the e-commerce live scene, for the present study, the research framework was constructed based on the SOR theoretical model. The factors involved in each study were measured by modifying the existing maturity scale, then the significance degree of influence of each path was verified by structural equation.
Considering that there is little research on the interaction between various factors with similar characteristics in live e-commerce, the present research both bridges a gap in literature and offers directions for further research in this area. The result of this research will allow the live e-commerce platform operators and the hosts to better understand how to transform the consumer’s views into purchase intentions and understand the types of consumers that they should focus more on.
To conduct research on this subject, the present study selects the content of live e-commerce, host charm, interaction, and trust in the host to validate the direct impact of live e-commerce characteristics on social presence and flow experience, as well as effects of social presence and flow experience on consumer intention. In addition, the significance of each path is tested, and involvement is investigated independently.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. In the following section, the literature reviews of every factor and the hypotheses are presented, Sections “Materials and Methods” and “Results” present the structure of research and methodology, and report the results, respectively. Finally, the last section draws out the conclusions of the research and outlines areas for further research.
The research contribution of this paper can be divided into theoretical and practical parts. Theoretically, this paper verifies the promoting effect of flow experience and social presence on the transformation of consumers’ purchase intention in e-commerce live streaming. Furthermore, the influence path verification of social presence on flow experience is added, and the significance of each influence path is verified under different involvement degrees. At the practical level, this study concluded that the main factors influencing consumer experience during the current e-commerce live streaming still on the host, and thus developing trustworthy outstanding hosts is an important approach to raising the purchase intention. On the other hand, the low involvement degree of customers are more easily affected by experience, thus on the-commerce live streaming business marketing strategy, more attention needs to be paid to low-involvement consumers.
6. Conclusions
This study investigated the impact of characteristics of live e-commerce on social presence and flow experience based on the S–O–R theoretical framework. The empirical analysis revealed that host charm, interaction, and trust in the host exerted a significant impact on social presence, whereas trust in the host and perception of host charm exerted a significant impact on flow experience. In addition, consumer involvement was found to play a significant regulatory role in the proposed model. Overall, the following conclusions can be drawn:
(1) Live e-commerce is principally a marketing behavior, but significantly differs from offline marketing. On the one hand, consumers cannot contact goods or intuitively feel the quality of goods. In this scenario, the host serves as a bridge between consumers and goods. Through live broadcasting without clips, the host experiences and feels the goods for the consumers. Hence, the personal charm of the host plays a vital role in consumer experience and resonance. In ideal cases, consumers believe that the product experience presented by the host is consistent with theirs; this requires the host to interact with consumers for both shared and unique needs and suggestions in real-time. Thus, these two factors exert a significant positive impact on social presence. On the other hand, the host cannot physically contact consumers in live e-commerce, whereas consumers can enter and leave all live broadcasting rooms. Thus, the host should develop their trust in audience consumers. Meanwhile, online shopping consumers should also identify merchants and hosts that can be trusted to decrease time and augment the shopping experience. Hence, when watching live broadcasting by trusted hosts, consumers are exposed to high social presence and flow experience owing to relaxation and trust.
(2) At present, the entry barrier of live e-commerce is low, and any merchant and individual are eligible to participate. Hence, live e-commerce has extremely large coverage, and most industries have live e-commerce hosts nowadays. The cost for consumers to switch between different live broadcast rooms is meager, and consumers have access to various channels of information in online shopping. Hence, it is highly challenging for the broadcasting content to be the reason for enhanced social presence and flow experience.
(3) Consumer involvement plays a regulatory role in the proposed model. In low involvement, social presence and trust in the host exert a significant positive impact on flow experience. In addition, flow experience exerts a significant positive impact on purchase intention, and interaction exerts a significant positive impact on social presence, although the significance was not statistically significant in this study.
To date, the host remains the central part of live e-commerce. A host with personal charm and rational interaction can enhance consumers’ trust, thereby enhancing the social presence and flow experience of consumers in live e-commerce. Furthermore, merchants should focus on low-involvement, high-liquidity consumers and increase their consumption intention and purchase behavior by focusing on surprises, newcomer welfare, and flash sales.
Author Contributions
Data curation, Y.C.; formal analysis, H.W.; funding acquisition, Y.C.; investigation, H.W.; methodology, H.W. and J.D.; project administration, H.W.; software, Y.C.; supervision, U.A. and X.Y.; validation, U.A.; writing—original draft, J.D.; writing—review & editing, X.Y. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This research was funded by the project for enhancing basic scientific research ability of young and middle-aged teaching staff in Guangxi Universities, grant number: 2021KY0194. And the project of scientific research foundation of Guilin University of Electronic Technology, grant number: US20059Y.
Institutional Review Board Statement
Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement
Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.
Data Availability Statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.
Conflicts of Interest
There is no conflict of interest to declare.
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