Different roles of two kinds of digital coexistence: The impact of social presence on consumers' purchase intention in the live streaming shopping context

The social aspects of social commerce have not been considered in its entirety, particularly for the burgeoning live streaming shopping. Based on nationally representative data (n = 7701) collected via Douyin, a leading live streaming e-commerce platform in China, the study adopts PLS-SEM to test how social presence of the streamer (SSP) and that of other viewers (VSP) affect consumers' purchase intention (PI). A comprehensive framework integrating SSP, VSP, loneliness (LN), and consumer experience (CE) is proposed to understand consumers' PI in the context of live streaming shopping. It is found that SSP, VSP as well as CE, have direct positive effects on consumers' PI. Different roles played by social presence of two social actors are identified. Specifically, SSP exhibits a more pronounced impact on both CE and consumers' PI compared to VSP. Notably, contrary to the role of SSP in alleviating consumers' LN, VSP is found to significantly intensify consumers' LN, which implies that digital coexistence of other viewers in the live streaming shopping context may not provide consumers with a positive sense of companionship. LN affects consumers' PI via a complete mediation effect of CE, underscoring the vital role of CE in shaping consumers' PI in the live streaming shopping context, which also implies potentially distinct internal processes between current context of concern and traditional offline contexts. Moderating effect analyses reveal that LN negatively moderates the total effects of SSP on both CE and PI, indicating LN may function as an inherent self-protective element during social interactions between consumers and the streamer in the live streaming shopping context. Managerial implications, limitations and suggestions for future research are also discussed at the conclusion of the paper.