Way to success: Understanding top streamer's popularity and influence from the perspective of source characteristics

Live streaming opens a new way for selling products, in which the streamer plays a leading role. Whereas e-commerce live streaming has become ever-increasingly prevalent, how to attract viewers and improve the conversion rate have become problems bothering lots of streamers. Based on 245 viewers' experience of watching top streamers' live streams, we try to find a successful way for small streamers from the perspective of streamer characteristics. This study identifies streamer characteristics from three aspects (attractiveness, competence, and communication style) and examines their effects on streamer's popularity and consumer's behavioral intentions. The results show that beauty, expertise, humor, and passion are all proved to be positively related to hedonic value, and both warmth and expertise are positively related to utilitarian value. Meantime, the results highlight the importance of expertise while beauty shows minor importance. Streamer's popularity can only lead to watching intention, it shows no effect on consumer's purchase intention. These findings highlight streamer characteristics as key factors in affecting streamers' popularity and consumers' watching and purchase intentions and its complex effect in live streaming and marketing.