Cultural Understanding of Live Streaming E-commerce in Asian markets
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7903/ijecs.2031Keywords:
Live streaming, culture, social marketing, e-commerce, Eastern culture, cultural dimensionsAbstract
Why does live streaming e-commerce become so popular in Asian countries? The advancement of telecommunication technology is insufficient to explain such a regional phenomenon. This qualitative research is to analyse live streaming videos to discover cultural indicators to give answers to the question. To do so, features of live streaming e-commerce such as identification, parasocialisation, and community, are identified from a review of literature and reinterpreted to articulate cultural indicators by applying anthropologists’ cultural dimensions. This conceptual methodology is further verified through a video analysis method (n=10) based on interpretivism for case study research that discovers hidden cultural features such as belongingness, affective engagement, group trust, co-ownership, and so on. The features are consistent with anthropologists’ dimensions of Eastern culture that the popularity of live streaming e-commerce is highly related to cultural backgrounds, which can be considered to develop marketing strategies in a more consumer-culture friendly and systematic way.
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