144 / 2024-04-22 09:29:11

Employee or Influencer Live Streaming? A Manufacturer’s Strategy for Virtual Character Adoption considering Live Streaming Reviews

Live streaming reviews,virtual character’s intelligence,product exposure power,influencer value

Considering a manufacturer sells its products to consumers via a live streaming channel, we investigate the manufacturer's strategies for virtual character adoption, and employee or influencer selection, considering live streaming reviews. Some important factors are identified by us to assess live streaming: (i) manufacturer's quality improvement and live streaming reviews influencing consumers' quality perception; (ii) influencer power and value, which reflect the influencer's personal influence and content categories, respectively; and (iii) virtual character's main characteristics, namely the virtual character's intelligence and product exposure power. We analyze five live streaming scenarios: merchant live streaming channel (Scenario EN), merchant live streaming channel with virtual character (Scenario EV), influencer live streaming channel (Scenario IN), influencer live streaming channel with virtual character (Scenario IV), and intelligent virtual character live streaming channel (Scenario V). Our findings show that without (with) virtual character, the manufacturer should pay attention to influencer power (the virtual character's cost factor) and the virtual character's promotion cost for employee or influencer selection. Besides, if virtual character's intelligence (the cost factor of the virtual character's intelligence) is low, the manufacturer (influencer) should adopt the virtual character as the live streaming assistant. Moreover, whether to adopt Scenario V relies on the virtual character's product exposure power and intelligence (the promotion cost), under Scenarios EN (IN), EV (IV), and V. We further consider the endogenous virtual character's intelligence and slice live streaming scenarios to verify the findings' robustness.