Who Hires Streamer? A Tug between Platform and Manufacturer

Abstract

Live-streaming e-commerce has revolutionized enterprise development strategies, presenting both opportunities and challenges in model selection. This study investigates three prevalent live-streaming models in supply chain ecosystems: merchant self-streaming, influencer-hosted streaming, and platform-driven live-streaming. Through a game-theoretic framework, we analyze these models to determine optimal decision-making and profit distributions among supply chain members. The analysis incorporates key variables, including product pricing, streaming effort level, and platform service level across various scenarios, while examining the impact of influencer commission rates and technological service fees on decision-making and profitability. A critical finding emerges from influencer-hosted streaming: influencers not only exert substantial market influence during streaming sessions but also generate significant post-streaming continuity effects for manufacturers. These continuity effects prove crucial in manufacturers’ streaming model selection. Furthermore, our analysis reveals a counterintuitive relationship between influencer commission rates and manufacturer profitability. While commission fees represent a direct cost, their increase can simultaneously drive product price elevation and market demand expansion, resulting in a dualistic impact on manufacturer profits. This research provides theoretical insights for supply chain decision-making in live-streaming commerce, offering practical guidance for model selection and partnership strategies.

Keywords

Live-streaming sale / merchant self-streaming / influencer-hosted streaming / sales commission

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Systems Engineering Society of China and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany

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