How live streaming influences purchase intentions in social commerce: An IT affordance perspective

As a new form of social commerce, live streaming shopping is becoming increasingly popular among Chinese consumers, which has aroused great interest among practitioners and researchers. Building a theoretical model from the perspective of IT affordance, our study examines how live streaming influences social commerce customers’ purchase intentions in China. We empirically measure the model by surveying customers who have shopped via live streaming shopping platforms including Taobao.com, JD.com, Mogujie.com, and Sina Microblog. Our results show that visibility affordance, metavoicing affordance, and guidance shopping affordance can influence customer purchase intention through live streaming engagement. Our study highlights the importance of understanding the implications of IT affordance for social commerce.