What do influencers signal? Marketing positioning and sales performance in live streaming commerce

Résumé fourni par la source

The diversity of live streaming commerce prompts influencers to adopt varied self-presentation strategies in their profiles and shows to attract viewers and drive purchases. Drawing on signaling theory, this study conceptualizes influencers’ personal profiles as marketing positioning signals and systematically identifies the types of positioning conveyed in the profiles of 1,543 influencers on a leading platform, evaluates their effectiveness and explores boundary conditions. We identify four distinct influencer market positioning types: Service-oriented, Product-oriented, Quality-oriented and Emotion-oriented. Relative to Product-oriented positioning, Service-oriented, Quality-oriented and Emotion-oriented positioning are all associated with significantly higher sales performance, with the latter two exhibiting the strongest effects. Furthermore, consistent with the logic of signal alignment, the effectiveness of positioning strategies depends on product characteristics: Emotion-oriented positioning performs best for hedonic, high-priced products; Quality-oriented positioning is most effective for functional, low-priced products; and Service-oriented positioning is better aligned with high-priced and functional products. These results suggest that marketing positioning is not universally effective but critically contingent on influencer-product alignment. The study deepens understanding of influencer-product matching in live streaming commerce and offers practical insights for optimizing influencer strategies and recommendation systems.

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