Boosting eCommerce sales with livestreaming in B2B marketplace: A perspective on live streamers’ competencies

This study identifies and tests how the competencies of live streamers affect the B2B livestreaming sales performance, with a particular focus on the moderating role of product type and product competitiveness. By analyzing a fine-grained livestreaming event dataset consisting of 915 brand firms from a B2B livestreaming platform and matching them with actual sales transactions, the results show that the cognitive and social competencies of live streamers have a positive effect on the sales performance, while emotional competence has a negative effect. More importantly, this study provides strong evidence that the effects of live streamers' competencies on online sales are contingent on product type and competitiveness. Specifically, live streamers' cognitive and emotional competencies have a more salient impact on experience product sales than search products. On the other hand, product competitiveness moderates the interaction effect between product type and live streamer competencies.