Platform differences in live-streaming commerce: The Role of task-technology fit and social-technology fit in driving consumer engagement and purchase decisions

Live-streaming commerce (LSC) combines online shopping with real-time social interaction, but consumer responses may vary across host platforms. Drawing on Uses and Gratifications as a motivational backdrop and Apparatgeist as a contextual lens, this study treats Task-Technology Fit (TTF) for shopping and Social-Technology Fit (STF) as complementary, pre-existing platform-schema beliefs measured before stimulus exposure. Participants evaluating Amazon reported higher TTF and lower STF than those evaluating Facebook or YouTube. Both forms of fit were positively associated with consumer engagement and, through engagement, with purchase intention. The two focal serial indirect effects ran in opposite directions and partially offset one another, while the total indirect effects were nonsignificant. Multi-group analyses supported invariance of the focal structural paths across platforms, suggesting that platform contexts differ in the levels of fit beliefs rather than in how those beliefs relate to downstream outcomes. The study advances a platform-contingent account of LSC by showing that functional and social fit are distinct, consequential, and differentially elevated across platform environments. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.