关键词: 直播带货, 双渠道, 策略选择, 溢出效应

Abstract: With the rapid development of Internet technology and e-commerce, the live webcasting business has gradually emerged, and “live streaming with goods”, as an important part of it, has attracted widespread attention. According to the 49th Statistical Report on the Development Status of China's Internet, as of December 2021, China's live webcast users reached 703 million, including 464 million live e-commerce users. The huge scale of live broadcast users has prompted more companies to start product promotion and marketing through the “live streaming with goods” approaches, of which inviting netizen anchors to cooperate is the most common. In the process of “live streaming with goods”, the web-celebrity anchor actively carries out two-way interaction with fans, vividly and three-dimensionally displaying product information, letting fans subconsciously “plant” the product, thus improving product awareness and market sales. At present, “live streaming with goods” has become a new channel for manufacturers to sell goods, which plays an important role in activating the market and driving demand upgrading. In addition, traditional retail is still an important channel for product sales, and in actual business operations, companies such as Haier and Gree, have opened both online “live streaming with goods” and offline retail channels, so such a dual-channel sales strategy is increasingly favored by manufacturers. Against the above background, we have combed through the literature on related topics, and found that the current research on webcasting mostly adopts an empirical approach, while research from the perspective of the game theory is relatively rare. At the same time, scholars have not considered the dual-channel structure of “live streaming with goods” and traditional retailing, or further considered the impact of the live-streaming spillover effect, so as to fail to study the sales channel strategy selection of the manufacturer.
In light of this, we first assume that there are three sales strategies for the manufacturer in the market: the single traditional retail channel, the single “live streaming with goods” channel, and the hybrid dual-channel. Also, we have considered that “live streaming with goods” will produce a live-streaming spillover effect, which in turn will affect the traditional retail channel. Then, we determine the market demand under each strategy based on the consumer utility theory and use the relevant game theory to construct the mathematical model of each strategy. Next, we solve the manufacturer's optimal decision in various models and focus on three questions through comparative analysis and sensitivity analysis: How does a hybrid dual-channel strategy impact the manufacturer's market sale and economic return? How should the manufacturer select the optimal sales channel strategy? How should the manufacturer choose the appropriate anchor partnership under the hybrid dual-channel strategy and further enhance the economic return?
The study shows that: the manufacturer's market sale with the hybrid dual-channel strategy is consistently higher than that with the single traditional retail channel strategy, but not necessarily higher than that with the single “live streaming with goods” channel strategy; the manufacturer's economic return with the hybrid dual-channel strategy is consistently higher than that with the single “live streaming with goods” channel strategy, but not necessarily higher than that with the single traditional retail channel strategy; only when the average level factor of anchor pit fees within the industry is small, or the level factor of fees is large and the consumer hassle cost is small, the manufacturer should adopt the hybrid dual-channel strategy, but when the level factor of fees and the hassle cost are large, the single traditional retail channel strategy should be adopted; in addition, if the manufacturer adopts the hybrid dual-channel strategy, it will be appropriate for the manufacturer to cooperate with head anchors when the average level of anchor pit fees within the industry is below a certain threshold, and conversely, once above that threshold, cooperation with waist anchors is more conducive to enhancing the economic return. Based on the above research results, we finally propose the following management insights: under the premise of maximizing the economic return, the hybrid dual-channel strategy is not necessarily the optimal strategy for the manufacturer, so the manufacturer needs to consider the law of the impact of live streaming on the traditional retail market and consumers' willingness to purchase, reasonably evaluate the cost of the “live streaming with goods” channel, and carefully select and optimize the sales channel strategy to obtain the maximum return. In addition, if the hybrid dual-channel strategy is adopted, the manufacturer needs to focus on the average level of anchor pit fees within the industry, and meanwhile choose anchors with suitable fan influence to cooperate with, and strengthen the overall publicity and promotion of the brand by signing agreements with the anchors to enhance the economic return further.

Key words: live streaming with goods, dual-channel, strategy selection, spillover effect