A 2020 perspective on “How live streaming influences purchase intentions in social commerce: An IT affordance perspective”

Live-streaming shopping has become increasingly popular in social commerce. Reviewing recent research on live-streaming shopping, we find that most papers about this topic have focused on user behavior and user experience. While these previous studies, including Sun et al. (2019), have provided useful insights into different aspects of live-streaming in social commerce, most of them have used cross-sectional surveys as the primary research method. Therefore, limitations such as the self-reporting bias or the common research method bias may hinder our understanding of the real effect of live-streaming on consumer purchase behavior. The actual causal relationship between live-streaming and consumer purchases should be further examined using more robust econometric models, natural experiments, or longitudinal studies.