Abstract
Due to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, live streaming has become a popular feature for social media users to participate in real-time broadcasting and purchasing activities. Marketers, brands, and social influencers are utilizing this feature as a new social commerce channel to drive awareness and sales to their products or services. Thailand is one of the leading countries in social live stream commerce from the increasing numbers of users’ engagement, sales, and overall gross merchant value. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate factors impacting trust, satisfaction, and purchase intention of users via live streaming commerce conducted by Thai social influencers. The quantitative approach was applied with non-probability sampling techniques to collect data through online questionnaire distribution. Samples of 480 sets were collected from Thais who had experience in purchasing from Thai influencers via social live streaming. Data was analyzed using the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural EquationModel (SEM) for model fitness and hypotheses testing. CFA result showed that data was reliable to affirm measurement model fitness and SEM has proven that purchase intention can be explained by the structural model. Trust, engagement, perceived value, and social presence have direct and significant impact on purchase intention, which confirm the theory of stimulus-organism-response. It is suggested that marketers, brands, and influencers focus on earning trust from users, establishing high levels of interaction at live stream commerce to boost viewer engagement, create values from live stream shopping, and build social-friendly personality to stimulate potential buyers.
Keywords: Live streaming, Social commerce, Purchase intention, Social influencer