how to change

I

Abstract

In recent years, with the continuous improvement of China's Internet technology and the

increasing integration of communication methods, under the boom of "live + something"

economy, various industries have begun to introduce live streaming technology, hoping

to bring new economic growth points to the development of the industry. As a new mode

of "live broadcast + something", e-commerce live streaming achieves the connection

between sales specific features and the advantages of live streaming traffic. Moreover,

with its high level of interactivity, e-commerce live streaming effectively expands users'

online social networking. More importantly, it has brought about a huge change of

traditional transmission way of various goods in the market. This research analyses the

development of e-commerce live streaming in China and its impact on consumer and

market through literature review, secondary data analysis and case study. In general,

e-commerce live has changed the way in which commodity production, content creation

and online consumption are connected, has affected consumers' behaviour and habits,

and has also opened up new economic growth points. In addition, the findings and

discussions analyse the current situation and characteristics of e-commerce live

streaming industry in China, and it take Taobao Live app as an example to analyse the

strategy that influence markets and consumers adopted by e-commerce live streaming

industry. Finally, this research reveals the problems existing in China's e-commerce live

streaming industry, hoping to enlighten the future development of this industry.

II

Lists of contents

Abstract.........................................................................................................................................I

Chapter1. Introduction.............................................................................................................. 1

Chapter2. Literature review......................................................................................................3

2.1 Live streaming................................................................................................................................... 3

2.2 E-commerce live streaming............................................................................................................... 6

2.3 Consumer behavior intention.............................................................................................................8

2.4. Research questions..........................................................................................................................11

Chapter3. Methodology............................................................................................................12

3.1 Searched keywords.......................................................................................................................... 12

3.2 Searched databases.......................................................................................................................... 12

3.3 Research approach........................................................................................................................... 12

3.4 Resources selection criteria............................................................................................................. 13

3.5 Limitations.......................................................................................................................................14

Chapter4. E-commerce live streaming in china.....................................................................15

4.1 The development background..........................................................................................................15

4.2 The current situation........................................................................................................................16

Chapter5. Case study of Taobao Live app............................................................................. 20

5.1 Strategies that influence markets and consumers............................................................................ 20

5.2 The characteristics and value...........................................................................................................27

Chapter 6. Problems in China's e-commerce live streaming industry................................ 30

6.1 Special scenarios lead to impulsive buying..................................................................................... 30

6.2 Homogeneity of production content and low user loyalty...............................................................31

6.3 The professional ability of anchors is polarized.............................................................................. 32

Chapter 7. Conclusion..............................................................................................................34

References..................................................................................................................................36

1

Chapter1. Introduction

As the advancement of computer science, the development of Internet technology, the

arrival of the national live streaming boom, the continuous optimization of 4G network

and higher Wi-Fi coverage, the live streaming industry has been provided with an

important and healthy social development context. In 2016, e-commerce live streaming

has gradually attracted public attention especially Chinese consumers, and therefore it

has been called the "first year of live streaming" in China. Now that the scale of online

shopping users is growing exponentially, the developmental guidance of e-commerce has

also been profoundly affected by live streaming marketing. For example, in the statistics

of 2017, more than 200 live streaming platforms or apps were born in China, and their

trend continues to increase. Meanwhile, compared with 2016, the number of people

watching live screaming showed a sharp growth trend. The emergence of mobile video

live has broken the traditional PC-side web Live’s limitation on live space and

background and achieved the effect that everyone can watch or operate live streaming

anytime and anywhere, enriching the content available for live streaming (Yan 2016). In

the “40th statistical report on the development of the internet in China”, by the end of

June in 2017, there were more than 514 million residents with the online shopping

experience in the Chinese market, which account for about 70% netizen in China and

shows a 10.2% increase compared to 2016. Monitoring data from the China Electronic

Commerce Research Centre shows that by the end of the first six months in 2017, the

quantity of internet live steaming users has reached 343 million, that is, the percentage of

netizens have been exposed to the webcast is 45.6% (China National Network

Information Centre 2017). This shows that there is a good basis for netizens in the live

marketing of e-commerce network anchors.

E-commerce live streaming is an application field of webcasting, which is a marketing

behaviour of e-commerce companies or e-commerce anchors through webcasting. From

the existing research, the academic circles have not directly defined e-commerce live

streaming, but classified e-commerce live streaming as a category in webcasting.

2

E-commerce live streaming is divided into two types: enterprise-oriented and

consumer-oriented. Enterprise-oriented live streaming mainly includes product launches

and event marketing. Consumer-oriented live streaming is mainly divided into

brand-oriented and product-oriented (including product promotion, e-commerce sales,

etc.).

In the field of e-commerce, Taobao Live relies on China's largest e-commerce platform,

Taobao, to provide users with a relaxed and lively live streaming consumption

environment. Taobao Live has not only innovated the way of e-commerce content

dissemination but also changed the traditional e-commerce sales model. Taobao Live,

which has both content dissemination and sales drainage functions, already possesses

consumer media attributes. After more than two years of development, Taobao Live has a

series of effective e-commerce live streaming marketing methods. Therefore, taking

Taobao Live as an example to explore the marketing methods of e-commerce live

streaming has certain typicality and representativeness.

In this research, six chapters will be introduced. The background of this research will be

described in the first chapter. Then comes the literature review in chapter two. This

research will analyse the existing research results through critical analysis of existing

knowledge, published resources and literature, to establish a research project. After

evaluating the existing literature, in chapter three, the methodology adopted in this

research will be explained. Also, the fourth chapter will mainly analyse the reasons and

present circumstances of the rapid development of e-commerce live streaming industry in

China. Followed by chapter five, which will take Taobao Live Streaming as a case to

analyse the measures taken by e-commerce live streaming to influence the Chinese

market and consumers, and to reveal the existing problems that will affect the

development of the industry. Finally, there will be a conclusion of this research of the

deficiencies, limitations and recommendation for practice and future research, as well as

the prospects of the e-commerce live streaming industry.

3

Chapter2. Literature review

2.1 Live streaming

2.1.1 Definition

Regarding the definition of live streaming, the academic community has not reached a

consensus. On the one hand, according to Twitch (2017), live streaming refers to a

network medium that can record and broadcast in real-time at the same time. This

network medium can receive the recording video provided by anchors at the same time

and continuously send and present it to the end-users. Similarly, Lei (2015) defines that

live streaming is the conversion of live video, sound, and images into digital signals in

the live streaming, which are transmitted to the audience in real-time through the network

medium. The audience will also post questions in the live streaming, and the anchor will

answer in the video, and to realize the synchronous transmission and synchronous

feedback of video information. As described by Qu (2017), "Webcasting is a real-time

social networking method based on streaming media technology. The anchor releases

information to users in the form of images, sounds, and videos, while users respond in

real-time through the barrage, likes, and rewards." After receiving the information, users

can respond in real-time by means of likes, rewards, bullet screens, etc.

On the other hand, Yan (2016) emphasized in his research that live streaming is highly

interactive, supported by mobile devices and various live streaming apps, to form an

interactive communication room for video information. As Twitch (2017) demonstrated,

compared with traditional video media, live streaming has a high level of interaction,

which is a more diversified and comprehensive form of communication. Based on these,

this research defines live streaming as a social mode in which the host uses live

streaming on the platform to deliver live content to the audience and realize real-time

interaction with the audience.

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2.1.2 Research status

Karl (2017) mainly studied the impact of mobile live video streaming on journalism. Karl

believes that mobile video live streaming can enable news and information to be

disseminated in a timely and effective manner. Due to the development of the Internet,

technical barriers and lower thresholds, User Generated Content (UGC) has become the

norm. Everyone can stream live images through mobile phone live streaming app

anytime and anywhere. Traditional live news is difficult for breaking news to arrive at

the scene immediately. Therefore, mobile live streaming in real-time has a considerable

influence on traditional news.

In Barney's (2017) study, the live-streaming economy is mainly researched and believed

that a large amount of financial inflow is an important factor to promote the development

of the live streaming economy. Up to that point, celebrities and enterprises from all

sectors of society also actively participate in the live streaming industry, which directly

drives the public's attention and enthusiasm for live streaming. It is not uncommon for

major international brands to use live streaming for product marketing. Brand owners and

Internet celebrities live actively cooperate to help companies carry out product marketing.

While watching the live streaming, consumers can quickly collect the information of

commodities as much as possible, and their purchase intention is more easily generated

to a large extent, thus the purchasing power will become stronger. This means that in the

live streaming economy, consumers' consumption path and time becomes shorter. At the

same time, Barney pointed out that when brands use online celebrity live streaming for

marketing, they need to accurately grasp the brand's marketing points. Therefore, they

need to subdivide online celebrities and cultivate them in their respective professional

fields.

It can be seen that the international research on webcast mainly analyses the rise of the

live streaming economy and the reasons for the emergence of the Internet celebrity

economy from a macro perspective and gives some prospects for the application of

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webcast in various industries. On the whole, international scholars' research on

webcasting is still at the stage of expounding and theoretical analysis of related live

streaming and there is a lack of relevant empirical research.

Chinese scholars conduct research on live streaming mainly from the perspective of

classification and characteristics. There are two main categories of live streaming. Zhao

(2016) divided live streaming into video live, voice live and text in form. The webcast

discussed in this article is live video. In terms of live streaming content, Zhang (2016)

divides webcasting into games, show, outdoor, e-commerce, lifestyle, and

pan-entertainment.

Ma (2017) divides live streaming into traditional and new types according to its content

sources. Traditional live streaming refers to collecting TV analogy signals, converting the

TV signals into digital signals, and uploading them to the Internet. In essence, it only

transfers the content of live TV to the Internet. The new type of live streaming means that

users collect audio and video by themselves through electronic devices such as mobile

phones or computers and convert them into digital signals and upload them to the

Internet. The content of the live streaming is mainly UGC. It can be seen that the main

difference between traditional live streaming and new live streaming is not the technical

means, but the content of the production. Zhao (2016) found that compared with the new

live streaming, traditional live streaming can only serve as audiences and cannot

participate in the live streaming process and lacks interactivity and feedback. In the new

live streaming, users can directly participate in the live process and interact with the

anchor in real-time.

At the same time, Chinese scholars have conducted in-depth research on the

characteristics of live streaming. The spread of live streaming is extremely fast, and its

influence is strong. Watching or performing live streaming has become a social

phenomenon in Chinese society. The audience interacted with the anchor during the live

barrage, which brought a good live atmosphere to the live. The powerful zero-day

6

interactivity satisfies the audience's feedback needs and entertainment needs. Zhong and

Wang (2016) believe that the current live content is colourful, and viewers can choose to

watch diversified live content according to their interests and hobbies. The competition

between live platforms makes them continue to devote themselves to improving the level

of interest in live, and network anchors and audiences are diversified. The sexual

interaction also gives the audience a sense of intimacy. Ma (2017) pointed out that live

streaming is different from TV programs that can be post-produced and beautified. It can

target different types and levels of audiences and show the most authentic side of the

anchor in the form of live streaming, which satisfies the audience’s psychology of seeing

is believing. It is easy to trust the anchor. The interaction between the anchor and the

audience, the audience and the audience, and the communication and companionship

with each other meet the social needs of both parties to a certain extent.

2.2 E-commerce live streaming

2.2.1 Definition and characteristics

Concerning the concept of e-commerce live streaming, a number of researchers believe

that e-commerce live streaming can be considered as the most creative social

e-commerce form. For instance, Sun, Shao, Li, etc. (2019) claimed that e-commerce live

streaming is a social media form and it has a specific feature of high Human-Computer

Interaction (HCI). Wang and Wu (2013) defined e-commerce live streaming as a

web-based business application by combining the field of view of computer science and

marketing research, which support social interaction and user-generated content of social

media and web technology, and to help consumers in the online market and the

community to make decisions and obtain products and services. In Sun and Chen’s

opinion (2019), e-commerce live streaming can be understood as a method to show

products or purchases by live screaming on e-commerce platforms, with the purpose of

helping consumers to know more about and have purchase intention of the products they

want to buy more quickly. Besides, Cui (2019) defines e-commerce live streaming as

introducing and promoting products or services through live streaming platforms, and

7

then selling products or providing services through other platforms, self-built websites or

network services, believing that the legal status of e-commerce live streaming is that of

advertisement publishers or advertising operators.

Regarding the characteristics of e-commerce live streaming, as Twitch’s (2017) view that

live streaming has high-level interaction. At the same time, this high level of interaction

comes from the active interaction of users, which provides a foundation for the in-depth

participation between anchors and audiences in e-commerce live broadcasting (Wang,

2019). In e-commerce live broadcast, anchors transmit product information directly, and

consumers can directly obtain various information of products, which avoids many

misunderstandings in the transmission process of product information and thus improves

the credibility of products. Also, in the process of product introduction and promotion,

the live streaming platform will constantly pop up the purchase link of the product, with

the purpose of promoting the purchase intention while watching the live broadcast and

having the opportunity to click the link to purchase immediately (Li 2016).

Compared with traditional live streaming, e-commerce live streaming has some

differences. On the one hand, most of the viewers of e-commerce live streaming are

women. E-commerce live streaming, as an important module in many well-known

e-commerce websites and apps, carries important functions for attracting traffic and

converting purchasing power for the platform. E-commerce live streaming can

effectively use the star effect, combine product characteristics and flexibly carry out

product marketing and brand infiltration, and become an important boost for the

e-commerce industry (Hua 2017). On the other hand, detailed breakdown of audience

types and needs, targeted publicity and promotion of products that meet audience needs,

and conversion of high popularity into purchasing power is the ultimate goal. For

instance, Lin (2017) conducted research on consumer behaviour in e-commerce live

streaming. Through descriptive statistical analysis of 4663 valid questionnaires in

Shenyang, China, it is concluded that among consumers, men are more willing to spend

than women while women are most concerned about the impression of the anchor, and

8

men are most concerned about the price, which helps e-commerce enterprises to carry out

targeted product promotion to consumers and then transfer it to actual purchasing power.

Finally, based on the above research and viewpoints, this study defines e-commerce live

streaming that the enterprises or businesses from all sectors of society take live

broadcasting platform as the main body of product sales, and then use anchors to

publicize their products in the process of live streaming, so as to achieve a win-win effect

of growing sales volume of products and forming the brand effect.

2.3 Consumer behavior intention

2.3.1 Concept definition

Before understanding consumer behaviour intension, it is necessary to understand the

definition of behavioural intention. According to Ajezn and Driver (1991), intention is

the prerequisite process of behaviour. Behavioural intention, which is a subjective

judgment that helps a person decide to take action (Folkes 1988). Harrsion et al. (1997)

believe that behavioural intention is the strength of a spontaneous plan to engage in a

specific behaviour. The individual behavioural plan is not interfered by the external

environment. The stronger the intention, the greater the possibility of behaviour.

Concerning the consumer behaviour intention, Bakera (2000) suggests that consumer

behavioural intention is more like a tendency judgment or action that consumers may

make after they know or experience a product, such as purchasing, repeat purchasing or

even recommendation. Similarly, Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) pointed out that consumer

behaviour intention reflects the extent to which consumers are positive about a service.

This implies that consumer behaviour intention is a standard or method to measure and

judge consumers' future behaviour tendency (Peter and Olson, 1996). In addition, Bi

(2010) believes that the willingness to act is the possibility of engaging in some kind of

corporate/product-related behaviour after consumers have contact with corporate

information. However, scholars have different definitions of consumer behaviour

9

intention because of their different research contents. In the concepts given by Ajzen and

Fishbein (1980), Harrison et al. (1997) and Bi (2010), there is no emphasis on the need

for consumer behaviour before, while Cronin & Taylor (1992) believe that the consumers

attitudes about the product, the service and the company are usually derived from the past

experience.

2.3.2 Measurement dimension

The multi-dimensional issues of consumer behaviour intention have basically reached

consensus. At first, Zeithaml et al. (1996) summarized 13 factors influencing behavioural

intention, led by the influence of service quality on behavioural intention, and these

factors were divided into 5 different categories, followed by (1) Loyalty: refers to

customers who are willing to conduct more transactions Possibilities; (2) Conversion

tendency: refers to the possibility of customers turning to competitors to buy; (3) Be

willing to pay the premium: If the price of the product goes up in the future, it will not

affect consumers' purchasing behaviour and power; (4) External reaction: the possibility

of customers complaining to others or spending in other stores when they encounter

problems during the service; (5) Internal reaction: the possibility of complaining and

responding to service personnel if problems are encountered during service. Later, three

scholars including Zeithaml simplified and summarized it as recommendation tendency,

purchase or repeated purchase intention, price sensitivity and compliant behaviour.

Moreover, by studying consumers in the service industry, Haemoon (1999) summed up

three different categories of consumer behavioural intentions, which are respectively the

propensity to recommend others, repeated purchases or even become regular customers

of products. Dong and Jin (2003) pointed out that consumer behaviour tendency consists

of three aspects: repurchase tendency, word-of-mouth and premium purchase. Guan and

Dong (2007) studied the influence of Li-Ning sport brand personality on consumer

behavioral intentions and divided behavioral intentions into two dimensions: the ability

to buy again and the ability to recommend to others..

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Although scholars’ expression is different, it can be concluded that the measurement

dimensions of behavioural intentions are nothing more than repurchase, premium

payment and word-of-mouth. In this study, these can also be regarded as several

important dimensions to realize the goal of e-commerce live streaming. Additionally,

these measurement dimensions of behavioural intention will be applied in subsequent

discussions, especially to provide a theoretical basis and research direction for exploring

how e-commerce live streaming affects Chinese consumers.

2.3.3 Influencing factors

Feng et al. (2006) summarized the previous research and classified the influencing

factors of purchase intention into five categories, namely consumer personality

characteristics, product internal clues, product external clues, consumption situation

factors and socioeconomic factors. Among them, the internal clues of a product refer to

the attributes related to the use-value of the product, generally refer to the product's value,

use value, quality, etc. (Wu and Mi 2005), while the external clues of the product

generally refer to the attributes which are not related to products such as price, brand,

guarantee, etc. (Wang 2005). It can be demonstrated that consumer purchase decisions

will also be affected by these situations. For example, through the empirical investigation

in stores, Hussain and Ali (2015) pointed out that the design of a store, its surrounding

environment, its atmosphere and its feeling towards salesclerks will directly affect the

purchase intention of customers. The research of Dong and Jin (2003) showed that the

following six factors have a significant impact on consumers' purchase intention in

shopping centres: buying desire, tourist attractions, weekends, staying time, frequent, and

the number of stalls. Besides, some scholars have pointed out that the socio-economic

factors affecting consumers' purchase intention include market demand, population and

purchasing power level.

In the current research hotspot of the Internet and social media, online purchasing

behaviour has attracted the attention of many scholars. According to Shen and Zhao

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(2018), online purchasing behaviour can be understood as the behaviour of consumers to

purchase goods or services from merchants or stores on the Internet. Compared with

traditional shopping behaviours, consumers make similar decisions, but at a faster pace,

and purchase in different ways. Through the investigation of consumers’ online shopping

intention, Limayem et al. (2000) found that the perception results significantly affected

the intention of individuals to purchase online. Chang et al. (2005), based on the theory

of TRA, found that consumers' evaluation of risks, satisfaction with online shopping,

comparison between products, quality of services received and trust in products are key

factors affecting consumers' online consumption behaviour, which can also reflect their

consumer behaviour intention. Ajzen (1991) developed the Theory of Planned Behaviour

(TPB) based on TRA, and he believed that perceived Behaviour control significantly

affected online purchase intention. Some scholars based on the Technology Acceptance

Model (TAM) believe that consumers' judgment on the ease and usefulness of using

products will directly affect consumers' willingness to buy products on the Internet.

These influencing factors are put forward based on the empirical research of researchers

and previous viewpoints. Based on these influencing factors, this study will also combine

these and secondary research data to explore the impact of e-commerce live streaming on

the Chinese market and consumers.

2.4. Research questions

After critically evaluating the current literature on e-commerce live streaming in China,

this research identified the research questions to be investigated:

1. Why China's e-commerce live streaming industry has developed rapidly in recent

years？

2. How does e-commerce live streaming affect the Chinese market and Chinese

consumers?

3. What are the current problems affecting the development of the e-commerce live

streaming industry?

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Chapter3. Methodology

3.1 Searched keywords

In the face of massive literature, it is very important to acquire the required literature and

data quickly and accurately in the research process. According to Padalkar and Gopinath

(2016), the title and abstract of the literature contain the main research content of the

literature, which is the key to distinguish whether the literature is important or not. The

first step to obtaining the literature is to obtain the literature from different databases. At

this time, searching keywords are the most effective tool. Keywords used in this paper to

search literature are shown as follows: "live streaming"," e-commerce live", "marketing

strategy", Taobao Live ", "celebrity economy"," consumer behaviour ", "social media",

"webcasting" and "brand marketing".

3.2 Searched databases

According to the methods of Busalim (2016) and de Ara ujo et al. (2017), searches are

carried out systematically in accordance with the database and the above keywords. The

systematic search of documents is mainly in the following electronic databases: CNKI,

Library search of Cardiff Library, Springer, SAGE Journals, Emerald, EBSCO, IEEE,

Science Direct, ProQuest, Elsevier, Scopus and Wiley Online. The researchers carefully

read the titles and abstracts of the resources and checked the sources of resources to

ensure their quality. As there are many resources useful for the subject of this research

project in China, the Chinese literature and materials used by the researchers are slightly

more than those in English.

3.3 Research approach

First of all, this research will use the secondary data analysis method for analysis. The

types of secondary data sources used in this research include but are not limited to books,

journals, company annual reports, questionnaires, research reports, government reports,

etc. Currently, many kinds of research are focusing on the use of qualitative or

13

quantitative research methods to study and analyze the live streaming industry and the

live e-commerce industry in China. By analysing existing data and resources, more

in-depth research results can be obtained (Bulmar et al. 2009). In addition, compared

with other research methods, secondary data analysis has the following advantages: (1)

the data is easy to obtain. Researchers can easily access most ancillary data sources, and

most of these resources can be accessed online from mobile devices. (Vartanian 2011). (2)

Save money and time. Researchers can obtain a large number of resources in the database

for free through online channels. In addition, the time spent collecting ancillary data is

usually very short compared to surveys and interviews. (Denscombe 2007; Smith 2006).

(3) It can provide longitudinal research and comparative research. For example, this

research draws conclusions by comparing data from different years (Saunders et al.

2015).

In addition, this research will use the case study method for analysis. Yin (1994) suggests

one of the conditions for the case study method was the focus of the research is on

answering the "how" and "why" questions. One of the research questions of this paper is

how does e-commerce live streaming affect the Chinese market and Chinese consumers?

So, the case study method is an appropriate way to solve this problem. In addition, the

case study method is divided into three categories, namely exploratory, descriptive and

explanatory case studies. This research mainly uses descriptive case studies that describe

an intervention or phenomenon and the actual environment in which it occurs (Ibid.).

This research takes Taobao Live app as a case and analyses the operational methods and

exiting problems it has adopted through researchers' investigation on it and other

resources' research on it.

3.4 Resources selection criteria

Scott (1990) developed four methods for assessing secondary data, including authenticity,

validity, representativeness, and significance. This research focused on the title, abstract,

and conclusions during the initial resource selection stage. Resources must meet the

14

following criteria: (1) Published in formal academic journals (2) Related to social media,

marketing, live broadcasting or consumer behaviour; (3) Student thesis must be a

doctoral dissertation; (4) include the specific searched keywords. Next, the researcher

will classify the papers by topic and check if there are the same resources.

Researchers mainly focus on the full text in the second screening process of resources.

The main selection criteria are: (1) The research direction and the subject of the main

content must be similar or consistent with this research; (2) The data on China's

e-commerce live broadcast industry is the data within five years from 2015; (3) The

source of the data is Can be checked and true. If no criteria are found in the resource, it

will be excluded.

3.5 Limitations

First, the quality of the data. Data collected from secondary sources may not be as

truthful as data collected directly from the source. (Wernicke 2014). Although some data

are selected from government reports or official company reports, the data may be

exaggerated or obscured due to the need for interests. Besides, unlike primary data,

secondary data is collected for specific purposes, but some data may differ from the

research question or not be consistent with the purpose of the research (Denscombe

2007). Due to the lack of data on the relationship between e-commerce live broadcasts

and consumer behaviour in previous studies, this research lacks such data. Finally, the

case study selected only one case for analysis, and the research results may lack

universality.

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Chapter4. E-commerce live streaming in china

As the continuous advancement of computer science and technology in China, the

technical level of live streaming has been constantly improved. Major traditional

e-commerce platforms have entered the live streaming industry, and various new

e-commerce live streaming platforms have emerged. The time of e-commerce live

streaming has arrived. The advancement of technology, the support of government

policies, the needs of the e-commerce industry and the improvement of people's

consumption levels provide necessary conditions for the rise of e-commerce live

streaming.

4.1 The development background

The background of the development of the e-commerce live streaming industry mainly

includes four aspects. The first aspect is the development of network technology.

Consumers can watch live streaming anytime and anywhere inseparable from the mobile

network environment. With the development of the application of 5G technology, China

is about to enter a new era of interconnectedness and deep human-machine interaction.

High-speed processing capabilities, convenient video viewing, and convenient signal

reception and conversion functions can provide users with better real-time audiovisual

experience. Also, with the convenience of one-click payment technology for mobile

shopping on mobile phones, smartphones, video recording equipment, etc., the anchor

can be streaming live anytime and anywhere with only one smartphone, and users can

also live at any time and place, following the anchor "watch and buy". All this provides

technical support for the rise of e-commerce live streaming (Xu 2018).

The second aspect is the support of the Chinese government. As an important driver of

China's economic development, the current e-commerce market continues to grow and

provide many new job opportunities for society. Therefore, China has introduced many

related policies to promote the healthy development of the e-commerce industry. As early

16

as 2015, the State Council of China issued the "Guiding Opinions on Actively Giving

Full Play to the Leading Role of New Consumption and Accelerating the Cultivation of

New Supply and New Power", encouraging e-commerce companies to actively innovate

and provide consumers with safer product guarantees and better services (Mao 2016). In

the government work report issued by the State Council in 2016, it was clearly proposed

to promote the integration of various industries with the Internet, to use the Internet as a

technological driving force for industry development, to promote the modern

development of domestic manufacturing, and to affirm the role of e-commerce in

stimulating domestic demand and stimulating consumer consumption. It also encourages

e-commerce companies to actively explore the international market and strive to innovate

(Ibid.).

The third aspect is that the e-commerce live streaming industry is favoured by investors.

According to the "Internet Investment and Financing Operation in the First Quarter of

2018", in China, e-commerce with huge consumption potential is one of the industries

most concerned by investors in the Internet field. A large amount of capital has poured

into the e-commerce industry. The amount of investment and activity are among the best.

(China Academy of Information and Communications Technology) In May 2016, the

Chinese app Mogujie announced that it would invest more than 300 million yuan in

support funds in the incubation and brokerage business of Internet celebrity live

streaming artists. In November 2016, another Chinese app salted egg home completed a

round of financing with a valuation. 500 million yuan, the financing amount is nearly 200

million yuan; Taobao Live in May 2017 has received 1.5 million US dollars in angel

round investment (Mao 2016).

4.2 The current situation

China’s e-commerce industry, which has experienced product-driven and

marketing-driven development, is implementing a content-driven strategy, which can

produce a large amount of high-quality and rich content and can more directly drive

17

product sales. It has become a market for more Internet companies to compete for.

Therefore, in the field of e-commerce, Chinese e-commerce giants such as Taobao and

Jingdong have also joined, promoting the transformation of e-commerce platforms to

content, fan and scene. After recent years of development, the current development status

of e-commerce live streaming has shown the following characteristics: The first is the

continuous development and growth of the e-commerce live streaming industry. As the

rapid advancement of webcasting in China, live streaming has become a hot word and

outlet in the investment field. Major companies have entered the live streaming to seize

resources. The e-commerce industry has also seen its dividends, which has attracted

major e-commerce capitals to enter madly. More and more e-commerce companies have

created live streaming functions. According to the "2020-2021 China Live E-commerce

Industry Operation, Big Data Analysis and Trend Research Report" released by IiMedia

Research (2020), online streaming users in China grew from 310 million yuan in 2016 to

501 million yuan in 2019, which shows an increase of 61.6%. In addition, the Chinese

live streaming e-commerce market grew from CNY 19 billion in 2017 to CNY 433.8

billion in 2019, an increase of 218.3%.

Figure1. Chinese e-commerce live market size from 2017 to 2019 and forecast for 2020

Adapted from (Source): IiMedia Research. 2020. 2020-2021 China Live E-commerce Industry

Operation Big Data Analysis and Trend Research Report

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Figure2. The scale of online live streaming users in China from 2016 to 2019 and 2020 forecast

Adapted from (Source): IiMedia Research. 2020. 2020-2021 China Live E-commerce Industry

Operation Big Data Analysis and Trend Research Report

The second is the content production form of UGC (User General Control) +PGC

(Professional General Control). In the early days of the rise of live streaming media in

e-commerce, the content of the major live streaming media platforms was largely based

on UGC created by personal or merchant anchors. The personal anchors displayed

products in the live streaming room and continuously output the product information

content, mostly through "pure sales". The traditional method of "push" quickly

recommends products to the audience, and the content is relatively simple and rude (Pei

et al. 2018). With the development of e-commerce real-time streaming media becoming

more mature and industrialized, PGC content produced by professional teams accounts

for an increasing proportion of the content produced by real-time streaming media, and

e-commerce real-time streaming media content is also more professional and

sophisticated. Currently, more than 80% of the leading hosts on Taobao Live have signed

agents. Many large companies have full operating teams and provide professional

business training and business running services such as role setting, real-time content

promotion and social media, social media account management, fan outreach, investment

monetization, online and offline event planning, etc.

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The last is the overwhelming dominance of e-commerce giants. According to a report by

ilMedia research (2018), in the first half of 2018, Taobao’s monthly active population

exceeded 300 million, ranking first among domestic mobile e-commerce platforms.

Jingdong and Vipshop ranked second and third, followed by Tmall and Suning.

Generally speaking, e-commerce live streaming is a tool for e-commerce platforms to

attract traffic and increase the conversion rate of products. The e-commerce platform that

it relies on has a significant impact on it, and domestic e-commerce companies that

originally have huge native traffic and abundant capital advantages. Giants also have an

absolute advantage in the layout of e-commerce live streaming. For example, Taobao

Live, Jingdong Live, and Vipshop Live naturally occupy the top position of e-commerce

live streaming from the beginning. According to “Online Survey Report on Consumer

Satisfaction of Live Streaming E-commerce” released by China Consumers Association

in March 2020, consumers who use Taobao Live account for 68.5%, and those who

frequently use Taobao Live account for 46.3%, which is an absolute leading position.

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Chapter5. Case study of Taobao Live app

With many advantages and great commercial value, the e-commerce live streaming

industry has attracted the attention of major e-commerce enterprises. Taobao, an

e-commerce giant that holds the largest share of China's online shopping market, added a

Taobao Live section on the homepage of Taobao when the live streaming industry was in

the bonus period. The independent app Taobao Live was launched in 2019. It is one of

the earliest and most mature e-commerce live streaming enterprises in China. The

practice and experience adopted by Taobao Live in content marketing by means of live

streaming are typical and representative.

5.1 Strategies that influence markets and consumers

5.1.1 Marketing promotion approach

For businesses, promotion is indispensable for achieving good marketing results.

Promotion refers to the direct or indirect delivery of information to consumers through

various advertising channels, which creates or enhances the consumer's impression of a

company or brand, thereby stimulating purchasing behaviour. In order to promote

Taobao Live, the transformation of the internal resources of the group of companies

overlaps with the promotion of external channels, which accelerates the promotion of

brand and content.

The first approach is to leverage the group's powerful user scale for internal user

conversion. In May 2020, Alibaba Group announced its fiscal year 2020 results.

According to the financial report, it can be seen that by fiscal 2020, the digital economy

in Alibaba will have 960 million active consumers every year, of which 780 million are

from China and 180 million from overseas. By the third months in 2020, over 300

million active users had visited the Alibaba Group's retail marketplace in China, and

billions of products had been shelved and bought here. Such a large user base has laid a

solid foundation for the Taobao online application to develop new users through Alibaba

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Group's internal resources. In China's retail market, they have a large number of

large-scale activities almost every day, which provides great convenience for

accumulating consumer information and optimizing consumer shopping experience.

Taobao APP can be regarded as the largest online business platform in China, where

software developers have carefully planned a series of rich and relevant content for

consumers. Up to that point, they encourage merchants to interact with consumers as

much as possible, such as live streaming, shooting videos and interactive activities online,

which will help attract more new users to join Taobao Live streaming.

The second way is to cooperate with the media to carry out multi-faceted external

promotion. In the Internet era, with people's increasingly social information acquisition

and lifestyle, the "we media" promotion platform with advantages of convenience,

diffusion, interactivity and autonomy has become a common publicity method used by

large enterprises in the marketing process. In the promotion of live streaming activity,

Taobao Live not only uses its official microblog, WeChat and other social platforms for

spread communication but also carries out the promotion of active-related contents

through offline advertisements, such as bus stop signs, subway channel advertisements,

building LED display screens and so on. In terms of content production and streaming,

Taobao Live has cooperated with Youku, IQIYI, mango TV and other Chinese Internet

video platforms for many times, and Beijing TV, Hunan TV and other TV stations to

jointly produce and streaming programs simultaneously (Shen and Zhao 2018). Taobao

Live effectively combines traditional media, video websites, social platforms and other

media promotion channels, and streaming the produced live content synchronously

through multimedia channels, achieving the first-time, multi-platform and

omnidirectional content presentation, and effective realization In order to share the

resources of each platform and the mutual conversion of users, whether it is traditional

TV viewers, online audiences or live audiences, they can watch live in their way and

purchase products at the same time.

Also, the live room can facilitate the secondary delivery of content. According to

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Lasswell’s 5W theory (1948), the information dissemination process consists of five

elements: Who Says What, In Which Channel, To Whom, With What Effect. The

information is shared, which means that information sent by the distributor through a

specific channel can be redistributed by the recipient. Also, the two-step post by

Lazarsfeld et al. (1940) showed that in the process of communication, information

reaches the target audience not directly, but through the mediation of opinion leaders.

Influencers pass on the information they receive to the people they affect, thus forming a

second communication. The e-commerce live streaming studio is like a tightly closed

group interaction environment. In a group, if members are affected by some words or

pollution, they will unconsciously form a sense of identity, which is called “group

identity”. At this time, members will choose to listen to the opinions of the group, so as

to achieve unified action. In this real-time streaming media environment, the presenter, as

the protagonist in the environment, can encourage viewers to share the real-time

streaming media room with friends and publish it on personal social platforms through

re-sales of text and users who watch live streaming media. When users who watch

real-time streaming media think that real-time streaming media content is helpful or

when they have a certain emotional connection during their interaction with the anchor,

they will voluntarily share the real-time streaming media room. Even if the audience who

originally didn't want to share is touched by others in the live room, their next group will

increase. Sharing activities can be performed to achieve the “sticky" process of

distributing auxiliary content that "anchor, live content, present audience, live content,

the remote audience". Taobao Live has a one-click sharing function of WeChat, Weibo

and QQ in the bottom right corner of the live page, which technically ensures that users

can easily and conveniently share the live room in real-time.

5.1.2 Content operation approach

E-commerce marketing has evolved from the past use of preferential promotion methods

such as spikes, full reductions, discounts, and low prices to the current era of content

operations. In the contemporary Internet environment, consumers’ online shopping habits

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have changed from a single product picture display to a rich content guidance model such

as short videos and live streaming. Taobao Live, as a new platform for content operation,

organically combines brand promotion, product content operation and sales, forming a

new electronic business sales model.

First of all, Taobao Live satisfies the personalized needs of consumers through its refined

content layout. With the upgrade of people's consumption level, people are more and

more in pursuit of more high-quality, more personalized, refined goods and content. The

exquisite content layout is based on user research and user data analysis, and according to

the needs of consumers, more effective content is accurately exported for consumers to

choose products that satisfy the individual demands of them. For e-commerce live,

vertical and differentiated content production planning should be carried out according to

product varieties, anchor types and user needs, so as to enhance the personalization and

professionalism of live streaming programs. Taobao Live has been built to cover all

kinds of goods industry vertical live at present, each column and merchandise category

for the segment, by optimizing the search, label, anchor tag, geography, etc do fine

import data flow and operation, make sure that every user who opens Taobao Live can

find something they are interested in. In addition, in order to satisfy the individual

demands of consumers, Taobao Live has created more than 2,000 distinctive market

segments such as intangible cultural heritage, procedural toys, layered clothing, jewellery,

etc., to achieve more sophisticated content. On Taobao app, users are mainly young

groups, with users aged 24 and under accounting for 37.9%, while female users account

for 51.03% (Xu 2018). In order to expand the audience of men and develop the potential

of men's consumption market, Taobao Live also added a column of "trendy men" in 2019,

including men's wear, trendy men's shoes, digital products, sports equipment and game

equipment, etc., to attract more male users into the Live room (Ibid.). Nowadays, there

are more and more vertical anchors in Taobao anchors. The personalized live streaming

content created by anchors brings a better match between supply and demand to

consumers, so as to attract consumer groups with similar interests and bring them more

accurate data and stronger liquidity.

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Furthermore, Taobao Live has deepened the live scene online and offline together.

Nowadays, consumers pursue a comprehensive unity of style, function, brand,

collocation and perception when purchasing goods. To meet these demands, e-commerce

live needs to create more concrete sales scenes and realize the comprehensive upgrading

of people, goods and markets. The scene in scene-based marketing consists of three core

elements: people, things and fields, while technology, space-time, subject and social

interaction play their roles around the three core elements. The core ability of scene

marketing is to detect and grasp the current state of consumers, timely meet consumers'

needs, and even stimulate consumers' potential needs (Peng 2015). Users who watch

e-commerce stream in real-time are diverse and mobile, and different user groups have

different consumption needs at different times in different ways. In addition to online

streaming, Taobao live also delves into offline scenarios such as manufacturing areas,

villages, physical stores, factories, and wholesale markets to activate a broader offline

consumer market. During the "12-12" shopping festival in 2018, Taobao Live invited

actors, singers and web celebrity to go out of the studio to bring richer and more concrete

live content to consumers, attracting more than 50 million views, and the transaction

volume increased by more than 500% (Shen and Zhao 2018). The form of live streaming

at the place of origin has the advantages of strong liquidity, fast commodity update and

strong experience. With the increasingly strong demand of users for online shopping

scenes, the live streaming at the place of origin and source of Taobao Live will play a

greater role, which will also affect the updating of the offline traditional retail industry.

In addition to connecting online and offline channels, Taobao Live has arranged global

live streaming, established dozens of international live streaming bases, and reached

cooperation with many international shopping malls. Now there are more than 600

international live streaming on Taobao Live every day (Ibid.). In the global live

streaming channel, the anchor takes fans to the United States, South Korea, Australia and

other global sites, and the audience together closely feel the production and distribution

process of goods and experience the exotic shopping pleasure together (Ibid.). At the

same time, professionals such as persons in charge, representatives, spokespersons,

production and R&D experts of overseas commodity companies will also appear in the

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live room to introduce detailed information such as brands and products to the audience.

Users in the live room can see what they have purchased. The whole process of sending

goods from overseas sources to their own hands gives people a sense of authenticity and

reliability. (Ibid.) Combined with local live streaming and international live streaming,

Taobao Live has built a 24-hour live streaming camp, which ensures the high-frequency

update speed of live streaming content. This approach gives users richer viewing

experience.

In addition, creating web celebrity anchors to drive the fan economy is also a major way.

According to Weibo and Iimedia Research (2018) jointly issued the " 2018 China

Internet Celebrity Economic Development Research Report”, which shows that in the

past year, China's growing number of web celebrity, industrial scale, more than 1 million

the number of head web celebrity fans scale growth reached 23%, at the same time, the

expansion of the scale of the web celebrity also makes web celebrity fans of rapid

expansion, as of April 2018, the Chinese web celebrity fans a total of 588 million people.

The commercial value of the influencers has been greatly enhanced by the fan economy.

At the same time, the influencers involved in the field also began to spread from

entertainment, fashion, beauty, finance, fitness, food and other directions. The content of

web celebrity production is also increasingly specialized and diversified. Of course,

content web celebrity still occupies the first echelon of web celebrity economy. Web

celebrity realizes commercial realization through the output of content and the creation of

personal intellectual property rights. When web celebrity successfully created such a

shocking economic effect, enterprises in various fields of the society also began to use

the creation of web celebrity to stimulate economic development, which has become one

of the most popular marketing methods at present. Meanwhile, more than 200,000

anchors have applied to become anchors on Taobao live streaming platform. These

anchors almost all have more than 1 million followers, and their monthly income can be

described as tens of thousands. (Mao 2016). For the purpose of better support popular

presenters, cooperation with a multi-channel network with strong economic strength,

highly specialized and systematic work has become the best choice for Taobao live.

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Among the more than 200 channels of Taobao Live broadcast, various channels provide

a series of learning and practice opportunities involving e-commerce live screaming,

such as anchor training, content release, fan participation, copyright protection,

investment, cash and so on. At the same time, in order to generate revenue, Taobao Live

can also create more exposure for popular or high-selling anchors. For example, Viya is

one of the champion anchors in Taobao. She joined Taobao Live in May 2016 and

became one of the first anchors in Taobao. By 2019, Viya had successfully built a fan

base of more than 4 million. According to the data, daily views rose from 690,000 to 2.31

million from February 2018 to January 2019, especially during the 11-11 shopping day in

2018, when the Viya team's live screaming attracted nearly 5 million viewers. (Ibid.). It

can be seen that half of the most active groups in the live broadcast are loyal fans of the

anchors. In this process, they will voluntarily help anchors to create an interactive

atmosphere and maintain order in the process of live broadcasting, which is considered to

be the group most likely to generate consumer behaviour.

The last point is that Taobao Live has created a new product supply chain model. "Live

before Production" is a new live streaming supply chain model that takes consumer

demand as the starting point and realizes precise customization of products for suppliers.

E-commerce real-time streaming media has changed the previous "shelf, sell, promotion"

product sales process into "selection, upcoming preview, real-time interaction,

modification, pre-sale, production, upcoming promotion, promotion" model(Li 2018).

Vendors can communicate and interact with fans through the host, understand fan’s

specific needs and opinions about products, make adjustments and modifications to fan’s

preferences, and then combine their own supply chains to produce goods and sell goods

in batches. In this way, the new live streaming supply chain model of "Live before

Production" makes the C2M (Customer to Manufacturing) model possible. The C2M

model, that is, based on consumer demand, manufacturers and suppliers of products set

up and adjust production plans based on immediate market demand, thereby changing the

traditional “I sell, you buy” model of production and sales, which is more flexible.

(Ibid.) In Taobao live streaming, real-time interaction between anchors and users, user

27

attention, likes, forwarding, watch time, etc. will be collected in real-time as user data in

the background for later analysis of user demand. Anchors and merchants can formulate

new product design plans that are consistent with their fans’ additional purchases and

product presales. They can use their fans' opinions or votes during the live screaming,

and then quickly determine the most popular products or product types, thus directly

promoting targeted production in factories. It can be clearly seen that the production

process of this commodity can effectively reduce the pressure on inventory and reduce

costs. In addition, it can promote product innovation. To better connect the anchor and

supply chain and improve the live streaming supply chain model of "Live before

Production". Taobao Live has established direct supply relationships with manufacturing

bases in many parts of the country, including 12 offline wholesale markets and live

streaming supply chain bases in Wuhan, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Hong Kong,

and South Korea (Shen and Zhao 2018). It has also opened up factory production lines

and formed the minimalist supply chain of "Factory, Taobao live, Consumer" so that its

own supply chain has formed an efficient system.

5.2 The characteristics and value

For Taobao Live, as a marketing model, e-commerce live streaming has brought them

more traffic, commodity sales and profits. For consumers, e-commerce live streaming, as

a carrier of information transmission, not only satisfies their shopping needs but also

satisfies their psychological needs in interpersonal communication and emotional sharing.

Specifically, the author believes that e-commerce live streaming represented by Taobao

Live has the following characteristics and advantages. The first is true direct dynamic

content delivery. Kolker (2004) pointed out that visual images directly present things in

front of us, and this belief in the authenticity of things extends to the conviction in the

image of things. By virtue of experience, images can be directly and quickly accepted

and understood by people compared with language. Traditional e-commerce sales are

mainly based on the static picture and text introduction, consumers can receive limited

information, and consumers are generally sceptical about the authenticity of the

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beautified commodity information, which is not conducive to stimulate consumers' desire

to buy. As a media channel for live streaming, the anchor point of the online broadcast

virtual environment is built on the screen at the other end of reality. Direct dynamic

video content increases the completeness of information transmission, realizes a wider

real display of goods and helps consumers to more intuitively and comprehensively

understand the product, reduce consumer uncertainty due to lack of information. For

example, in terms of food safety. Used to online purchase food only through words and

pictures to understand the information such as the composition, production, taste of food,

and can be directly rendered by electricity live food picking process, production,

packaging, anchors can answer consumer questions online, improve consumer

confidence in products, stimulate the audience's purchase enthusiasm.

The transmission of information is not a one-way line process. When the communicator

transmits the information to the audience through channels, the audience will give

corresponding feedback, which is a two-way and repeated process (Xu 2018). In the live

studio of Taobao Live, the host can communicate with the host through voice, image and

text message, and the audience can also communicate with the host through interactive

means such as barrage, facial expressions and gifts, which can improve the interactive

effect in the process of information transmission. Taobao Live built the two-way

real-time interaction between the host and audience of efficient information

communication mode. In the process of enterprise marketing activities, the interaction

frequency and number of on-site audiences are an important criterion for judging the

success of marketing activity. However, in traditional offline marketing activities, it is

often difficult to arouse the enthusiasm of on-site audiences for interaction due to

equipment, site, time and other reasons. Through live streaming, the interaction between

anchors and the audience as well as among the audience can influence the judgment of all

participating users, arouse their positive consumption emotions, and maximize the

interaction effect, so as to further induce the audience to purchase and even increase their

loyalty to anchors.

29

In addition, live can attract new users to the platform. Since the development of the

e-commerce industry in China, the user market has been divided among several

e-commerce giants (Ibid.). With the gradual disappearance of traffic dividends from

e-commerce platforms, the e-commerce industry is facing challenges in generating new

traffic and high costs. At the same time, with the emergence of new e-commerce

platforms in more vertical fields, the market competition of E-commerce in China is

becoming increasingly fierce, and consumers are faced with more diversified choices. At

this time, how to win more traffic is the decisive factor for the future development of

e-commerce platforms. As a fast-draining media, popular anchors, celebrity online

shopping and the use of varied and interesting live streaming media content can help the

platform get updated user traffic at a lower cost. Live streaming has become an important

traffic gateway. For example, in the early operation stage of Taobao Live, Luo Yonghao,

a famous Chinese entrepreneur, was invited as a guest to conduct a live. At that time, the

number of online viewers exceeded 100,000, among which the traffic introduced through

off-site sharing accounted for nearly 50% and the click rate related to the transaction

reached nearly 140% (Mao 2016). This live proves that there is a huge consumption

potential in live streaming.

Furthermore, live streaming can provide accurate promotion based on users' needs.

Enterprises need data for market evaluation, user analysis, product production and sales,

advertising and other business operations (Xu 2018). Precisely promote and deliver

content to your target audience at the lowest cost for the best communication experience.

Taobao Live can help companies get real-time user data in the interactive room at a lower

cost, such as the number of viewers entering the live room, the number of re-views of the

live room, the number of clicks on the product detail page, likes and comments, the

number of product purchases. The backend can collect and analyze this data to make it

easier for e-commerce and merchant platforms to analyze consumer trends and define

customer portraits, so merchants can adjust their product marketing strategies in time,

and anchors can use real-time streaming techniques to achieve the best sales results.

30

Finally, live streaming can improve brand awareness. At present, the main operating

model of e-commerce live streaming platforms represented by Taobao Live is to create

famous anchors, package them as network celebrities, and promote them with celebrity

effect. For brands, every live streaming is an opportunity to effectively promote products

by taking advantage of the popularity of famous anchors. In addition, in recent years,

many famous anchors cooperate with actors, singers and other artists with a large fan

base to conduct live streaming, using the fan economy to gain more attention and huge

profits for a single live streaming.

Chapter 6. Problems in China's e-commerce live streaming industry

As an increasing number of companies enter the e-commerce live streaming industry,

practitioners in the e-commerce live streaming industry are also growing rapidly, and the

scale of the industry continues to expand. However, as an emerging industry, there is still

a lack of national policy guidance and industry standards, which has led to an increasing

number of problems that have begun to emerge and have an impact on the sustainable

development of the industry. Pointing out these problems hopes to guide industry

practitioners to make improvements, and ultimately promote the healthy development of

the industry.

6.1 Special scenarios lead to impulsive buying

“Impulse buying is when a consumer suddenly has a strong and persistent impulse to buy

immediately. The impulse to buy is a complex pleasure that can lead to emotional

conflict. Moreover, impulse buying can easily happen without considering the

consequences” (Rook 1987). In a streaming environment, the presenter and audience

work together to create a shopping experience. In this trading environment driven by

emotional thinking and herd behavior, irrational impulse consumption is very easy to

occur. Display real-time audience, a number of comments and likes in the e-commerce

anchor room to make the audience feel the warm shopping atmosphere; Sales methods

such as countdowns and spikes will create time pressure on the audience; The

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information evokes the competitive psychology of the audience (Mao 2016). Various

interactive live media streaming technologies offered by the presenter have stimulated

the audience's desire to consume, thereby encouraging viewers who watch the live

broadcast but are unwilling to buy products to act as soon as possible. Then, after the first

purchase, the consumers who regain their composure are much more difficult to make a

second purchase immediately, and they may even distrust e-commerce or get bored with

the online shopping and e-commerce anchors because their psychology and consumer

satisfaction after impulsive shopping cannot meet their expectations..

6.2 Homogeneity of production content and low user loyalty

The similarities in the types of anchors, content and recommended products in

e-commerce live streaming can easily lead to the audience's aesthetic fatigue. On

e-commerce live streaming platforms, some hot style products favoured by many

consumers appear repeatedly in multiple live rooms. Anchors give the same introduction

to the products, and the promotion activities adopted in the live rooms are the same.

These boring and lack of innovation live streaming content cannot meet the diverse needs

of consumers. For consumers, they need to pay a certain time cost to watch the live.

When users can no longer get more new products or content from live streaming, their

reliance on live streaming almost disappears. This is because, unlike some social

platforms (weibo, WeChat), which can establish communication in the real context and

thus establish "strong relationships", but the anchors and fans in the live screaming are

essentially just virtual communication, that is “weak relationships”. (Liu 2020).

American sociologist Randall Collins (2012) argues that interactive service chain is the

core of attention, and each other's emotional joint in the exchange of a kind of body and

mind to achieve coordination, to produce "group solidarity", and makes the members

obtain the corresponding sense of identity, interactive short emotional energy through

constantly interacting with relatively stable emotional energy is converted into the same

situation, empathy and identity. The purpose of live streaming is to maximize the

attention of online users through interesting content, rather than forcing all online users

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to enter the live broadcast studio. Therefore, the virtual and weak interpersonal

relationship between online users and anchors is difficult to maintain in a stable and

long-term environment. At the same time, it is difficult to strengthen the cohesion

between users and anchors. In e-commerce live streaming, the interaction between

anchors and fans is frequent, the exchange of interests is numerous, and the emotional

foundation is weak. It is difficult for anchors to form their own stable fan community

with a considerable scale. Judging from the number and flow direction of some anchors

of Taobao Live screaming, it can be concluded that there will be a common flow among

the followers of anchors of the same type or direction. This means that if the live time of

anchors is not fixed and has no durability, a large number of fans can immediately find

alternative anchors.

6.3 The professional ability of anchors is polarized

In the author's opinion, there are three requirements to be a high-quality and professional

anchor. First, the anchor must have a basic moral quality, professional accomplishment

and positive and correct image. Second, anchors must have some experience in a specific

area in order to secure their ability. Third, the host has a certain fan base and can convert

their own resources to the live room. At present, many anchors engaged in e-commerce

live streaming are non-professional marketers, they don't know much about the

professional field of the product, although some top celebrities have a large following.

Hence, when presenting specific products in live streaming, they can only refer to the

appearance and price of the product. While waiting for the introduction of superficial

information, each product is always rated as “good”, “beautiful”, “low price”, But it's

hard to answer questions about professional products from viewers in the studio. The

same speech, similar products and similar promotion methods cannot meet the user's

recognition demand for products, and will also lead to the audience's fatigue and doubt of

the speaker's professionalism. This kind of non-professional marketing method is not

only not conducive to the conversion of room traffic, but also greatly increases the

probability of the audience buying commodities that are not in their own demand, which

33

leads to the high return rate of room commodities and reduces the fans' trust in the

anchors (Liu 2020). In addition, in the e-commerce live streaming industry, as in other

live streaming industries, the income of anchors is not proportional to the input and

output, and there is a serious polarization. From the perspective of current expenditure

and income of network anchors, their actual income is relatively low after deducting

expensive input costs such as rent, equipment, training and promotion. What's more, the

income levels of the top anchors differ greatly from those of ordinary anchors (Mao

2016).

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Chapter 7. Conclusion

This study uses e-commerce live streaming as the research object and Taobao live

streaming as an example. It is divided into three main parts, which discuss the current

development of live streaming e-commerce in China and its impact on consumer and

market. The first part analyzes the overall situation of China's e-commerce live streaming.

The author analyzes the background conditions and development status of the rise of

e-commerce live streaming. In the mobile Internet era, mature live streaming technology

has built a convenient and comfortable communication platform for anchors and viewers

at both ends of the screen. Coupled with the government's policy support, market demand

and the transformation and upgrading of people's consumption patterns, these provide an

easy and high-quality development environment for the e-commerce live streaming

industry.

The second part takes Taobao Live, the largest e-commerce live app in China, as an

example, analyzing strategies that influence markets and consumers. On the one hand, it

analyzed the marketing promotion approach adopted by Taobao Live to succeed. On the

other hand, it explains the actual impact of e-commerce live streaming on driving

consumption and the impact of content practices on consumer behaviour. In addition, the

author has analyzed and summarized the characteristics and benefits of live e-commerce

streaming presented by Taobao Live, which is a new type of e-commerce marketing

method. The value generated by e-commerce live streaming marketing is analyzed from

the perspective of platforms and consumers, which shows that e-commerce content

marketing through live streaming is highly operable. Also, the advantages of remarkable

results will become an indispensable means of content marketing and information

dissemination in the e-commerce industry in the future.

The third part mainly analyzes the problems in the practice of e-commerce live marketing.

The first point is the impact on consumer behaviour: e-commerce live streaming makes

consumers produce impulsive consumption through environmental creation and content

35

marketing. The second is the phenomenon of content homogeneity, which can easily lead

to the aesthetic fatigue of the audience, which is a more obvious problem in the

e-commerce live broadcast industry. Finally, the uneven level of anchor business

capabilities is also an important hidden danger affecting the development of the

e-commerce live streaming industry.

Due to the limitation of resources, space and time, this research has the following

shortcomings. First, the research lacks data analysis on the way and impact of

e-commerce live broadcast on consumers. In terms of analyzing how the methods used in

e-commerce live broadcasts affect consumer behaviour, due to the lack of relevant data

in previous studies, there is no data support between the methods used by e-commerce

live broadcasts and the effects produced. Secondly, due to space and time constraints,

this research finally did not propose solutions to the problems in the e-commerce live

broadcast industry. Finally, with regard to the content of consumer behavioural influence,

it is better to use primary data research methods to obtain direct data.

For future research, it is a good starting point to explore consumers' preferences and

opinions on e-commerce live streaming from the consumer's standpoint. With the

emergence of more and more e-commerce live streaming apps, what kind of product

design and marketing activities can increase consumer activity and better trigger

consumer behaviour is worth exploring. With the continuous development of technology

and the advent of the 5G era, what new features and new functions will emerge in

e-commerce live streaming the future with technological progress is also worth

exploring.

36

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