Live-streaming commerce, streamer influence, and channel strategy

Live-streaming commerce has emerged as a significant and powerful sales force. This new type of commerce enables consumers to engage in real-time interactions while making purchases over the Internet. An increasing number of companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, have adopted live-streaming commerce to attract and engage consumers. Our study investigates the supplier's optimal strategy in response to the fast-growing live-streaming commerce and explores the most effective way to collaborate with third-party livestreamers. We first analyze the impacts of inter-channel cannibalisation upon introducing the new live-streaming channel and find that suppliers should stay with the traditional online channel unless the live-streaming channel can increase the market size significantly. We then assess suppliers' choice in live-streaming mode: self-streaming versus collaborating with professional livestreamers. Our results suggest that collaboration is more profitable only if the third-party livestreamers have a substantial edge in influence level compared to self-streaming. Our analysis also explains the scenario in which suppliers initially choose to sell products through the third-party live-streaming channel but later decide to switch back to self-streaming.