Can comments and dialogues make sense? The effect of two-way interactions on sales and followers in live streaming commerce

This research employs interaction ritual model to explore the two-way interaction between streamers and viewers on a live streaming commerce platform. To be specific, the study investigates the impact of viewers' real-time comments and streamer's dialogue on product sales and follower growth, using minute-level data for detailed analysis. The results show that real-time comments exhibit a nonlinear inverted U-shaped relationship with product sales and increment in followers. Such relationship indicates that the “overloaded comments” during live streams could cause a problem on live streaming commerce platforms. In addition, we find that streamer's dialogue has a positive effect on product sales and can mitigate the inverted U-shaped relationship between real-time comments and product sales. Furthermore, we identify that streamer's dialogue has a delayed effect on product sales, with sales typically occurring 2.5 to 5 min after the dialogue ends. The findings provide valuable guidance for optimizing the management of live streaming commerce platforms.