The Live Frontier: Exploring the Opportunities and Challenges of Livestream Influencer Marketing

This thesis investigates how livestreaming reshapes influencer marketing and explores the implications of live content creation for streamer wellbeing, performance and value creation. It comprises three complementary studies. The first conceptualises streamers as synchronous influencers and theorises how passion orientation and need satisfaction shape authenticity, wellbeing and overall influence. The second develops a conceptual model of livestream influencer marketing effectiveness, showing how the simultaneous expression of high degrees of immediacy, indeterminacy and interactivity in livestreaming can generate distinctive value for streamers, brands, platforms and consumers. The third provides empirical insights from social media observations and depth interviews with experienced streamers, demonstrating how the characteristics of livestreaming can satisfy and frustrate streamers’ core psychological needs and reframing streamer performance through the lens of wellbeing, highlighting how brand partnerships can amplify these effects. Together, the thesis advances influencer marketing scholarship by providing a comprehensive study of synchronous online influence and highlighting the opportunities livestreaming creates for brands and entrepreneurial online creators. It also explores the moral and strategic importance of supporting streamer wellbeing to ensure sustainable performance and value creation can be achieved in this emergent interactive online context.