Impact of streamers’ characteristics on sales performance of search and experience products: Evidence from Douyin

Live streaming social commerce, a booming branch of online retailing, has enabled online retailers to interact with customers face to face, defying spatial restrictions. Recent research in live streaming social commerce has started to regard streamers' characteristics as important signals that affect customers' purchase intention. Drawing on signaling theory and the match between streamers and products, this paper aims to investigate the heterogeneous effects of streamers' objective characteristics on the sales performance of experience products and search products in the context of live streaming social commerce. Empirically, using the monthly panel data of 10,087 streamers on Douyin, this paper constructs a fixed-effect regression model to identify the effects of two streamer-centered objective signals, namely, gender and assortment depth, on streamers' sales performance. The results showed that (1) assortment depth has a positive effect on streamers’ sales performance, especially when streamers have a high popularity level; (2) male streamers basically perform better in selling experience products, probably due to their high trustworthiness; and (3) female streamers perform better in selling search products, especially when the streamer has a high popularity level. These findings highlight how important it is for brands and suppliers to consider streamer-product fit when choosing suitable streamers.