Live streaming services (e.g., Facebook Live), whereby video is broadcast in real time, have been adopted by many small individual sellers as a direct selling tool. Drawing on literature in retailing, adoption behavior, and electronic commerce, this paper proposes a comprehensive framework with which to examine the relationships among customers’ perceived value of live streaming, customer trust, and engagement. Symbolic value is found to have a direct and indirect effect via trust in sellers on customer engagement, while utilitarian and hedonic values are shown to affect customer engagement indirectly through customer trust in products and trust in sellers sequentially. Elucidating the role of live streaming in increasing sales and loyalty, these findings suggest different routes through which small online sellers can build customer engagement with two types of trust as mediators. Theoretical and managerial implications of this analysis for social commerce are further discussed at the conclusion of this paper.

Introduction

Today, social networking sites (hereafter, “SNSs”) such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are spaces through which users not only connect with others and consume news but also get information about products and even shop. According to PwC’s (2016) Total Retail Survey, 16% of a sample of online shoppers worldwide said they had purchased directly via a social media channel—an increase from 7% in 2014. This figure is higher in Asia (30%), especially in Thailand (51%), India (32%), and Malaysia (31%), and Southeast Asia is now leading the social commerce (“s-commerce”) market, where most sellers are small brands or customer-to-customer sellers (Priceza Group, 2016). Globally, there is a large number of individual sellers selling via Facebook profiles, Facebook groups, and Facebook marketplaces, and there are more than 65 million small business pages on Facebook (Facebook, 2017). S-commerce on SNSs has become a low-cost, easy alternative to e-commerce whereby individual sellers can easily set up their own account to sell products, requiring no formal registration or web design skill. Unlike a well-established business with sound return policies or quality control, buying from small individual sellers, especially those with no physical store, is thus risky, as customers may not get a product at all, or may get a fake, poor-condition, or low-quality product. This has resulted in customers having less trust toward individual sellers than toward large established firms (Jarvenpaa, Tractinsky, & Vitale, 2000; Lu, Deng, & Yu, 2006). Some online sellers are trying to address such customer concerns by allowing the return of products, or by using third-party payment processors or cash on delivery. Recently, some s-commerce and e-commerce sites such as Facebook and Taobao have enabled live video streaming. While brands such as Burberry and Starbucks have used Facebook Live to broadcast their marketing activities (e.g., fashion shows), several individual sellers in various countries go beyond advertising to real time to sell their products. Live streaming is used to demonstrate how products are created and used, to show different perspectives of products, to answer customer questions in real time, and to organize live activities that entertain and encourage customers to buy on the spot (Lu, Xia, Heo, & Wigdor, 2018; an example is illustrated in Fig. 1). Importantly, live streaming adds value to the SNSs through the existence of broadcasters/ streamers (Smith, Obrist, & Wright, 2013). It allows sellers to reveal their faces, offices/homes, and personalities (i.e., social presence), and brings the buyer–seller interpersonal interaction and related selling techniques used offline back to the online world. Such livestreamingenabled social presence and interaction can enhance the shopping experience, reduce shoppers’ uncertainty, and increase the level of trust they have toward the s-commerce seller (Hajli, 2015).