Unravelling the Significance of Social Presence in Live E-commerce: An Empirical Exploration Employing Social Presence as an Intermediate Variable

Abstract

Live e-commerce is an important e-commerce industry that has emerged in recent years, and due to its diversified scenarios, strong interactivity, and fast growth in user scale, it has become an important way to pull the development of e-commerce. Based on the theoretical analysis, this paper constructs a relationship model of streamer live streaming, social presence, and consumers' purchase intention. Then, a questionnaire survey was carried out in an online way, and the hypothesis testing of the theoretical model was carried out. The results show that: attractiveness, professionalism, and interactivity have significant positive effects on consumers' purchase intention; the mediating effect of social presence is significant, i.e., streamer live streaming promotes consumers' purchase intention by improving the sense of presence. Accordingly, two suggestions are put forward: one is to enhance the consumer experience as the focus of creating a good atmosphere for live streaming, and the other is to emphasize streamer screening and training to create a professional network with strong competence. The second is to emphasize streamer screening and training to create a streamer team with strong professional ability.