Analysis of the effects of live streaming characteristics and optimal stimulation levels on consumer

Abstract

With the increasing development of science and technology, e-commerce has developed a new sales tool and model through the power of science and technology, that is, online live broadcasting. With the growing popularity of live streaming, many companies are using it as a new tool to boost sales. Compared with traditional e-commerce, live online shopping is different in many ways. In traditional e-commerce, information is disseminated to consumers through pictures and audio to promote consumer behavior. However, live online shopping can be conducted through real-time video and real-time interaction between anchors and viewers, and viewers can have a more comprehensive understanding of the information they want through live content. It has greatly improved consumers' mood, purchase intention and continuous viewing intention. After the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia, the audience watching the live broadcast has increased significantly, according to the data in China in 2021, there are more than 600 million users, an increase of more than 40% over previous years. As a new sales tool and a new e-commerce model, online live broadcasting has attracted more and more academic attention. However, there are not much research on the influence of purchase intention from the perspective of consumers. Therefore, this study mainly explores the factors that affect consumers' senses, and then looks at the extent to which consumers' emotional states affect their purchase intention and continuous viewing intention. Therefore, this study mainly uses the Flow theory to study the emotional state of consumers. Since the characteristics of live broadcast and anchor will stimulate the emotions and behaviors of consumers, the optimal stimulating water is also adopted as the regulating factor to observe the influence of consumer emotions. This study not only takes consumers in one region as the survey object, because there may be unknown factors in different regions, so China and Singapore are adopted as the main regions of the survey. A questionnaire survey was conducted to collect the data needed for this study. The receipts for this study were collected in May 2023, and the viewers who watched the live broadcast in China and Singapore were the collection group. A total of 494 valid questionnaires were collected in China and 494 valid questionnaires were collected in Singapore. A total of 39 questionnaire items were selected from previous studies as measurement items. The questionnaire was measured on a 7-point Likert scale, where 1 represents "strongly disagree" and 7 represents "strongly agree". SPSS and AMOS programs were used for data analysis in this study. The results of this study show that in the background of live broadcasting, the more consumers can feel the authenticity of themselves in the network when watching live broadcasting, the more individual emotional perception can be stimulated and feelings such as pleasure and immersion can be generated. For consumers in China and Singapore, social presence has a positive impact on traffic. Second, we found that interaction during live streaming had a significant impact on the emotional perception of Chinese and Singaporean consumers, thereby improving consumer behavior. In other words, live interactivity has a significant positive impact on traffic. In Singapore, the streamer's expertise in live streaming has a positive impact on traffic, but Chinese consumers are less concerned about the streamer's expertise, the study showed. Finally, in terms of moderating effects, we found that optimal stimulation levels positively moderated the relationships between social presence, interactivity, anchor attraction, expertise, and mobility in China and Singapore. Live broadcast users will have a certain influence due to the influence of stimulus level, especially the high optimal stimulus level will regulate the emotional state when watching live broadcasts.