Whether Live Streaming Has a Better Performance? An Examination of Product Presentation Modes on Cross-Border E-Commerce Platform

Abstract

Scholars have long recognized that product presentation plays an important role for consumers to understand product and make further decisions, but it is not well-tested in the cross-border e-commerce context. Additionally, there exist inconsistent insights regarding the influences of the two major product presentation modes currently used by cross-border e-commerce platforms (i.e., static pictures and live streaming). Therefore, drawing on regulatory focus theory, this study develops a research model to explain and differentiate how live streaming and static pictures affect cross-border purchase intentions through the motivation systems associated with different desired end states (i.e., accessing benefit and avoiding uncertainty). Partial least squares approach and relative importance analysis were used to test the model with 272 survey participants. The empirical results show that both product presentation modes can enhance cross-border purchase intentions through regulatory focus. More interestingly, it shows that static pictures are better at reducing perceived uncertainty, whereas live streaming is more effective at increasing perceived desirability, in leading to higher cross-border purchase intentions. This study contributes to differentiating the impacts of different product presentation modes in attracting cross-border purchase intentions from a regulatory focus perspective and provides practical implications for cross-border e-commerce providers and sellers to leverage distinct product presentation modes to attract consumers.

Keywords:

• Cross-border e-commerce
• product presentation modes
• live streaming
• static pictures
• regulatory focus theory
• perceived product desirability
• perceived product uncertainty
• purchase intentions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Please see https://www.qyresearch.com/reports/852659/cross-border-e-commerce.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation of the Ministry of Education (22YJC630175); Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (LY22G010003, LY23A010015); Post-Funded Project of National Social Science Foundation of China (22FGLB101); 2021 Zhejiang University of Technology Humanities and Social Science Pre-Research Fund Project (SKY-ZX-20210198); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Provincial Universities of Zhejiang (GB202303003) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72032008).

Notes on contributors

Yujing Xu

Yujing Xu is an Assistant Professor at Department of Business Administration, School of Management, Zhejiang University of Technology. Her research interests include digital commerce and digital marketing, healthcare information management, and AI management.

Kai Zeng

Kai Zeng is an Associate Professor of Business Administration at the School of Management, Zhejiang University of Technology, China. His research interests include e-commerce and organizational behavior.

Jia Guo

Jia Guo is currently an Associate Professor at School of Management, Zhejiang University of Technology. Her main research interest is statistical data analysis.

Xiang Li

Xiang Li is a postgraduate at School of Management, Zhejiang University of Technology. Her research interests include e-commerce and data analysis.

Lucong Dong

Lucong Dong is a postgraduate at School of Management, Zhejiang University of Technology. Her research focuses on information management.

Wenqian Jiang

Wenqian Jiang is a postgraduate at School of Management, Zhejiang University of Technology. Her research focuses on digital commerce and digital marketing.