earticle

영어

China has now become the largest live commerce market and the COVID-19 has catalyzed live commerce into the next level. TikTok is a platform that is popular with short video sharing and the largest number of daily active users in the world. After its live commerce function was first introduced in 2019, TikTok has become among the top three live commerce platforms in China within just a few years. With the COVID-19 pandemic, the growth speed of TikTok live commerce exponentially increases and its potential seems unlimited. Although consumers’ (watchers’) impulse buying is considered one of main success factors, the specific mechanism on how their impulse buying is influenced has not been clearly investigated. Therefore, based on the S-O-R framework, this study identifies influencer (i.e., attractiveness, expertise, and interactivity) and platform characteristics (i.e., guidance shopping, visibility, and metavoicing) as stimuli factors and examines their impacts on the likeliness of impulse buying (response) through flow experiences (i.e., enjoyment and concentration) as organism factors in Chinese individual live commerce context using the TikTok platform. With survey responses from 324 Chinese consumers who have used TikTok live commerce at least once within six months, research hypotheses were tested using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. Research findings show that, with the exception for interactivity and metavoicing, most stimuli factors have an impact on enjoyment and concentration, and both flow-related experiences also influence consumers’ likeliness of impulse buying. This research would enrich the studies on live commerce and expand the S-O-R framework in the context of live commerce. It is expected that this study will provide many practical implications for managers as well.