Seminar (Dept. of Marketing)

Theme：To Live or Not to Live? Direct and Indirect Effects of Live Streaming

Speaker：Yanlai Chu（Assistant professor of Renmin Business School）

Time：2022-06-22 10:00

Address：Online Meeting

Language：Chinese/English

Abstract：

Live-streaming e-commerce is burgeoning around the globe and a trillion-yuan market in China. This paper examines the impact of live streaming on stores’ performance and decomposes it into direct and indirect effects. Based on detailed order data of 6,000 stores and complete streaming records of related influencers, we employ a difference-in-differences method with propensity score matching to evaluate the impact of live-streaming adoption. Results show that live streaming can significantly increase the unit sales and revenue of adopters. And the increase is driven by influencers’ efforts and their matching with stores’ product portfolios. Surprisingly, we found that the impact of live streaming hinges on the indirect effects: increased sales on streamed items beyond a streaming session and comparable impact on items of the same category within the same shop. In addition, results show a stronger effect on hedonic products than on utilitarian products and varying effects across different types of influencers.

Key words: live streaming, influencer, propensity score matching, causal forest