Effects of Social Solicitation on E-Commerce Livestreaming Performance

Ecommerce livestreaming combines live video streaming with ecommerce to create interactive shopping experiences. During livestream sessions, streamers provide product-related information that can influence viewers’ purchase decisions while interacting with their audience. They also solicitate social engagement to achieve their performance goals: sales and social capital growth. We posit that the outcome of such solicitations results from the interplay of social exchange and consumer reactance. Using a unique dataset comprising 1,128 livestream sessions on Taobao, we find that streamers’ social solicitation positively affects their social capital growth but has a negative spillover effect on sales performance. This negative spillover effect is mitigated by providing more product-related information during livestreams and is strengthened with increased purchase solicitations. Further analysis reveals that certain social solicitations, such as those for comments, do not harm sales if they align with viewers’ purchase intentions. Our findings offer actionable insights for streamers to minimize the negative effect of social solicitation on sales, such as providing product-related information and carefully choosing the type of social solicitation.