Fixed or flexible: How product formats affect consumer redemption behavior for live-streamed food and beverage (F&B) products

With the rapid growth of live-streaming e-commerce in the food and beverage industry, low redemption rates despite high sales volumes have become a critical challenge for merchants. This research investigates how product formats and familiarity affect consumer redemption behavior and identifies the underlying psychological mechanisms and boundary conditions. Through five studies using one archival-data study, three scenario-based experiments, and one field experiment, we find that: product formats and familiarity interact significantly: set meals yield higher redemption under low familiarity, while vouchers perform better under high familiarity. This relationship is mediated through a dual-pathway mechanism: at low levels of familiarity, a loss-avoidance pathway prevails through perceived risk, whereas at high levels of familiarity, a gain-seeking pathway dominates through perceived preference fit. Purchase type further moderates this interaction, such that the effect emerges only under impulse purchase conditions. This research extends the theoretical understanding of the “purchase-redemption” process in live-streaming commerce and offers actionable insights for F&B firms to optimize product strategies.