The Impact of Negative Bullet Comments on Audiences’ Impulse Buying Intention in Fashion Livestreaming

Livestreaming is becoming increasingly popular in fashion retailing, and bullet comments have become an important source of information for consumers in making purchase decisions. This study aimed to explore the impact of negative bullet comments on audiences’ impulse buying intention and to identify individual differences considering the moderating effect of body image. The hypotheses were tested in three situational experiments. Experiment 1 demonstrated that both negative bullet comments on the product and those on the host significantly reduced audiences’ impulse buying intention. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that there was an interaction effect between the two types of bullet comments, indicating that the negative impact of negative bullet comments on the product on consumers’ impulse buying intention was weaker in the presence of negative bullet comments on the host. Experiment 3 further demonstrated that body image strengthened the negative impact of negative bullet comments on the host, while the moderating effect on the impact of negative bullet comments on the product was not significant.