Chapter 7 Conclusion

To sum up, we explored live streaming sales on Douyin from different aspects: hosts, sale mixes, relationship with short videos and timing influence. Using appropriate data visualization and analysis, we found several interesting and noteworthy observations:

  1. In general, consumers came to KOL because they have expertise in a specific category and came to celebrities because of their reputation. Therefore, the answer to the question of whether celebrities have advantages over KOLs in live streaming sales is ambiguous, as both groups have their special features and are appealing to their specific targeting viewers.

  2. When a lot of people like or comment on a hosts’ videos, the live stream of that hosts are more likely to become popular and generate more revenues. The reason might be viewers who like or comment on a host’s video would probably watch their broadcast and spend while watching. The effect is more obvious in the celebrity group.

  3. No matter the host is a KOL or a celebrity, stated broadcasting at 10am appears to be the best choice to generate more sales. Also, an average stay of 2.5 minutes is related with a decent total sales. In addition, selling on weekends is more likely to increase sales amounts, whereas selling on Monday and Thursday might be less favorable choices.

Given the above findings, we also noticed that our analysis has many limitations. For instance, there are a few obvious outliers that existed in our datasets. For example Jia Nailiang, a famous Chinese celebrity known for his affairs, just entered this business, but he achieved a very high level of sales amount, greatly surpassing a lot of other hosts who have already been in this industry for many years. We will continue to track his progress and to see if he can maintain his efficiency and popularity in the next couple of months. In addition, we realized nowadays, it is really challenging to tell the boundary between KOLs and celebrities, as more and more celebrities started to use the Internet as the main method to promote themselves and to expand their influence. A typical example is Luo Yonghao, who is famous from his early life and now actively participates in online events and takes them as an opportunity to expand his influence. We might need additional scrutiny in defining the boundary.