In the latest Marketing Department Research Workshop VIII, Dr. Haiying Yang presented “The Role of Live-Streaming Commerce”

The overall research serves to investigate how a supplier responds to the fast-growing live-streaming commerce and if a supplier should collaborate with key opinion leaders (KOLs).

In the abstract, Dr. Haiying Yang explains: “Live-streaming shopping has become a significant and powerful sales force nowadays. It allows viewers to watch and shop through real-time interactions over the phone. More and more companies start to launch their live-streaming shopping channel to consumers. We investigate how a supplier responds to the fast-growing live-streaming commerce and if a supplier should collaborate with key opinion leaders (KOLs). We first examine multiple centralized settings when a supplier builds his own live-streaming teams and hosts live sessions. Our analysis shows that the supplier faces a trade-off between the potential market demand increase and the channel competition. The supplier should only use the traditional channel if the live-streaming channel cannot attract many consumers. Otherwise, despite the channel competition, the supplier should use a dual-channel supply chain or a single live-streaming channel for profit maximization. Note that when the channel substitution is low, the dual-channel supply chain can dominate the single-channel options. We also design a two-stage game to formulate one decentralized case that the supplier offers a revenue-sharing contract and sells products through a KOL’s stream. Our results show that the supplier and the KOL will be discouraged in media investment compared with the centralized models, which might decrease the supplier’s expected profit eventually.”

Congratulations on your research findings, Dr. Haiying Yang!