Purpose: Live streaming commerce has grown rapidly in recent years. Although the way streamers communicate with viewers is the key to influencing users' purchase behaviors, little is known about the influence of streamers' communication style on purchase intention. Drawing on parasocial interaction theory and flow theory, this study examines the influence of streamers' interaction orientation on viewers' immersion and parasocial interactions, and its effect on viewers' purchase intentions. The moderating effect of streamers' expertise and attractiveness is also examined.Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted an empirical study using a structural equation modeling approach based on 407 responses to a questionnaire completed by live streaming audiences.Findings: Results indicate that streamers' interaction orientation has a positive effect on viewers' immersion and parasocial interactions, in turn positively affecting viewers' willingness to purchase. Streamers' expertise positively moderates the effect of their interaction orientation on viewers' immersion and parasocial interactions.Originality/value: This research is among the first to explore the effect of streamers' communication style and provides a framework for how their communication style affects viewers' purchase intention by enhancing immersion and parasocial interaction in live streaming commerce.

Purpose: This study explores whether and how four main factors of short-branded video content (content matching, information relevance, storytelling and emotionality) facilitate consumer engagement (likes, comments and shares), as well as the moderating effect of the release time (morning, afternoon and evening) in such relationships.Design/methodology/approach: This study uses Python to write programs to crawl relevant data information, such as consumer engagement and short video release time. It combines coding methods to empirically analyze the impact of short-branded video content characteristics on consumer engagement. A total of 10,240 Weibo short videos (total duration: 238.645 h) from 122 well-known brands are utilized as research objects.Findings: Empirical results show that the content characteristics of short videos significantly affected consumer engagement. Furthermore, the release time of videos significantly moderated the relationship between the emotionality of short videos and consumer engagement. Content released in the morning enhanced the positive impact of warmth, excitement and joy on consumer engagement, compared to that released in the afternoon.Practical implications: The findings provide new insights for the dissemination of products and brand culture through short videos. The authors suggest that enterprises that use brand videos consider content matching, information relevance, storytelling and emotionality in their design.Originality/value: From a broader perspective, this study constructs a new method for comprehensively evaluating short-branded video content, based on four dimensions (content matching, information relevance, storytelling and emotionality) and explores the value of these dimensions for creating social media marketing success, such as via consumer engagement.

Live streaming is continuously becoming an important tool for destination marketing nowadays. Despite that many destinations use live streaming to attract prospective tourists, little is known about how destination live streaming influences the audience’s travel intention. Against this backdrop, this study constructs a framework of the influence of destination live streaming features (i.e. interactivity, vividness, authenticity, and immediacy) on consumers’ travel intention according to S–O–R theory. Data were collected through an online questionnaire and analyzed by the structural equation model. The results indicate that the interactivity, vividness, authenticity, and immediacy features of destination live streaming positively influence consumers’ sense of presence and trust, which in turn enhance their travel intentions. This study provides good guidance for future live streaming marketing in tourism.

Live streaming commerce as a popular marketing method has attracted wide attention, but little is known about why consumers continue to watch live streaming. To fill this research gap, this study draws on social presence theory to examine the impact of sense of community, emotional support, and interactivity on viewers’ social presence, which, in turn, influences their live streaming watching. Furthermore, the moderating role of streamer attractiveness is also investigated. The authors collected survey data from 386 live streaming viewers and used the structural equation model to test the research model. The results reveal that sense of community, interactivity, and emotional support positively affects viewers’ social presence, leading to viewers’ watching live streaming. Furthermore, streamer attractiveness plays a significant moderating role between social presence and live streaming watching. This study provides a unified theoretical framework to explain the intention to watch live streaming based on social presence theory.

Purpose: This study aims to examine how virtual influencers (VIs) affect purchase intentions in tourism and hospitality e-commerce live streaming (THCLS) by focusing on the roles of VIs’ source credibility, trust in products, trust in VIs, emotional engagement, parasocial relationships and influencer–product congruence. Design/methodology/approach: Survey data from 416 active viewers of VIs in THCLS were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. Findings: This study highlights the importance of the VIs’ source credibility, which positively affects trust in the product, trust in VIs and emotional engagement. However, source credibility does not have a positive impact on parasocial relationships. Trust in products positively influences trust in VIs. Emotional engagement and trust in VIs significantly influence parasocial relationships, which, positively affects purchase intentions. Influencer–product congruence strengthens the link between parasocial relationships and purchase intentions but does not moderate the relationship between trust in VIs and purchase intentions. No significant gender differences were observed, although minor discrepancies were noted in the effect of trust in products on trust in VIs. The importance–performance map analysis revealed that parasocial relationships are the most important factor influencing purchase intentions, while influencer–product congruence has the highest performance, trust in products is the least important and VIs’ source credibility has the lowest performance. Practical implications: This study provides actionable insights for marketers leveraging VIs in the THCLS sector, emphasizing strategies to enhance VI credibility, foster parasocial relationships, ensure influencer–product congruence and adopt gender-neutral marketing approaches to effectively influence purchase intentions. Originality/value: This study offers theoretical and practical insights into the role of VIs in THCLS, illuminating their impact on consumer behaviour and purchase intentions.