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