Pick the Right Tactics When Online Sales Go Live: An Empirical Analysis of Livestreaming for Amazon Sellers

Abstract

Using livestreaming to boost sales has become an essential strategy to achieve deeper interactions with customers for many large e-commerce platforms worldwide. Existing livestreaming literature has looked at multiple Chinese e-commerce platforms but not enough attention has been paid to the U.S. market. This study investigates consumer behaviors and the promotion efficacy in the Livestream setting on Amazon Live. We analyze the time patterns of customer engagement and explain why sellers should use different promotion strategies for weekdays and for weekend streamers. Besides, we present evidence that the average video display time per product is crucial for the livestream promotion efficacy and suggest optimal time-exposure intervals as a benchmark for sellers to align with.