Research on the influencing factors of consumers’ impulse buying in live streaming contexts

With the continuous development of information technology and social environment, new business models are emerging and traditional retail e-commerce has embraced live streaming as a powerful sales channel. Live streaming has begun to conquer the world by gradually entering the life of the public. Live streaming allows individuals to freely participate in the streamer room, provide virtual gifts to their favorite streamers, and purchase products recommended by the streamers. The means by which products and services are sold through live interaction, also known as live streaming commerce (LSC), has also become an essential marketing tool for enterprises. For example, under the influence of "COVID-2019," the "live era” has arrived and the LSC market has reached an all-time high, with the size of China's LSC market reaching 961 billion yuan in 2020. As a common consumption phenomenon, offline impulse buying accounts for 60% of consumers' purchasing decisions, while online impulse buying is even more pronounced. Specifically, LSC facilitates vivid presentation of products and enhanced real-time interaction between streamers and consumers, thereby increasing the likelihood that consumers will make impulse buying. Thus, the study of impulse buying in LSC has significant practical relevance for accelerating the circulation of goods in the market and improving the marketing effectiveness of businesses. While academics have taken an interest in LSC and impulse buying in its context, theoretical research lags far behind the business practice and remains fragmented and unsystematized. Hence, this study integrates three elements, that is streamer behavior, consumer perception, and platform characterize, to explore consumers' impulse buying in LSC. Through scenario experiments and questionnaires, LSC consumer data was collected and analyzed, and the following conclusions were drawn: (1) Based on self-determination theory, this study explores the direct effects of exterior design, self-efficacy, psychological ownership, and impulse buying by multiple linear regression, as well as the indirect effects of these variables via structural equation modeling. The study found that the exterior design of the LSC platform can positively influence consumer impulse buying; while self-efficacy and psychological ownership synchronously and serially mediate the relationship between the exterior design of the platform and impulse buying. (2) From the perspective of consumer perceptions, consumer relative deprivation in LSC positively affects consumers' impulse buying. Escape motivation, perceived self-efficacy, and ego depletion perform synchronous and serial mediating roles between relative deprivation and impulse buying. Stronger or weaker relative deprivation can trigger two paths of strong impulse buying behavior. The weak relative deprivation is a common factor in all three paths of weak impulse buying behavior, which should take into account the combined effect of its antecedent conditions. (3) From the perspective of streamer behavior, streamer communication style and LSC platform type interact in influencing consumers' impulse buying. In the case of the interaction-oriented communication style of the streamer, the entertainment content type leads to stronger impulse buying compared to the traditional e-commerce type; in the case of the task-oriented communication style of the streamer, the entertainment content type leads to lower impulse buying compared to the traditional e-commerce type. Whereas parasocial interaction plays a mediating role and consumer loneliness plays a moderating role among the above relationship. In conclusion, this study systematically explores how to improve consumers’ impulse buying in LSC, and analyzes more comprehensively the mechanism of impulse buying in different contexts (streamer communication style, consumers' relative deprivation, and platform exterior design). The novelties of the study are mainly in the following aspects: First, it focuses on the influencing factors of LSC consumers' impulse buying, which enriches the current research on the antecedents and deepens the understanding of LSC consumer's impulse buying. Second, it expands the mechanism of the role of streamer, consumer, and scene factors on the LSC consumers impulse buying, and systematically portrays its formation path. Third, the boundary conditions of the effect on LSC consumers’ impulse buying is explored in terms of platform type and individual traits, and the effect of these moderators is discussed in-depth. Based on the proposed research model and related empirical results, strategic suggestions are made for live streaming platforms, streamers, and merchants to increase consumer impulse buying. Firstly, enriching the attractiveness of LSC. Live content should be more lifelike and personalized, fully displaying streamer talent, skills, and unique resources, increasing the effectiveness of consumer use, improving the stickiness of fans and user experience, and strengthening the pleasure and immersion. Secondly, deepening the interaction with consumers. Live streaming platforms, streamers, and merchants should make full use of the social aspects of the live streaming platform, determine the appropriate communication style in combination with the platform used, pay attention to the real-time interactive feedback, improve the quality of the streamer's service, let consumers experience presence, and compensate for the lack of direct access to goods. Thirdly, paying attention to consumers' traits. For consumers with different degrees of relative deprivation, it is recommended to use differentiated segmentation and adjusted business strategies according to the personalities and habits of consumers in the oriental cultural context. Marketing stories are also recommended to be told in a targeted way. Fourth, creating engaging ambient leads. Live streaming platforms, streamers, and merchants should develop convenient and easy-to-control communication channels, a clear layout and concise links to create an atmosphere of product scarcity. In other words, using limited time and marketing techniques, customers should get the impression that the products are helpful, practical and enjoyable, therefore stimulating their buying impulse