Understanding User Engagement Mechanisms on a Live Streaming Platform

摘要

As part of new emerging eCommerce innovations, live streaming has started to gain lots of attention in business world because of its potential capability to boost sales online. Enabling interactions among a real-time seller, users (i.e., viewers) and peer users in e-Commerce platforms, live streaming is promising to facilitate real-time interactions among seller, users and peers online, which are likely to alleviate the physical separation between sellers, users and products in cyber space. Although some businesses are proactive to invest on this new living stream platform with a goal to more effectively engage their users, it is still largely unknown whether this effort can ultimately increase their consumer conversation rates. Accordingly, this research aims to gain more in-depth insights into users' acceptance of live streaming shopping. Based on multimedia learning and information foraging theories, this research conceptualizes user engagement mechanisms (i.e., product interactivity, communication immediacy, and peer cues) associated with a live streaming platform and furthermore explores how these mechanisms are likely to improve users' product evaluation and their serendipity to explore more unexpected products, and in turn how they impact users' attitude and intention to buy products on a live streaming platform. Through an online survey study with 200 users on a live streaming platform, this study finds that the identified three user engagement mechanisms significantly improve users' capability to evaluate products and their serendipity behavior online, which also have a positive impact on users' attitude and intention to shop on a live steaming platform.