Luxury brands’ live streaming sales: the roles of streamer identity and level strategy

Abstract

Today, live streaming selling has grown and pioneered sales opportunities for luxury brands. Through a lens of influencer marketing and source credibility theory, this study investigates the role of streamer identity (i.e. internet celebrities and e-shop sellers) and streamer level (macro vs. micro) on luxury brands’ live streaming sales. Using fixed-effect models, the data from 7,164 live streaming campaigns between 1 August 2020 and 31 December 2020 are analyzed covering 17 international luxury brands on Taobao Live. The results suggest the use of a greater number of internet celebrities and e-shop sellers yields greater live streaming sales. Internet celebrities’ live streaming sales are positively associated with e-shop sellers’ live streaming sales. We further find that the streamer level moderates the effects of internet celebrity count and e-shop seller count on live streaming sales. These findings offer novel managerial implications for luxury brands’ streamer selection strategies.

Keywords:

• Influencer marketing
• live streaming
• internet celebrity
• luxury brands

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.71831005, 71771063).; Research Project for Higher Education Supported by The Education Department of Liaoning (No. 2021JYT05).