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In 2011, the first live streaming platform of online games, twitch TV (it is a free video live-streaming platform that enables viewers to watch live broadcasts of video gamers playing.) was born in the United States. Due to the changes of people's attitudes towards the computer games and mobile games and the development of international electronic competition industry, live streaming soon became popular. Due to the popularity of twitch, live streaming as a new medium has become a prevalent recreational and leisure activity in China since 2012. In 2015, a large number of companies began to invest in the field of online live streaming in China. Since that a few broadcasters have run their own online shop on Taobao or other e-commerce platforms, using the live streaming to advertise the products they sell.
In the first half of 2019, major Internet enterprises actively explored the “live +” mode, and e-commerce platforms took advantage of the “live” to drive their own business development. The simplified threshold of e-commerce platform attracts the host to stay, gathers fans, and establishes the emotional connection between the platform and consumers. From March 2018 to March 2019, among the total transactions of e-commerce platform Mogujie, the total transactions using mobile live streaming increased by 138%, and the users using mobile video live service increased by 42%. In the Chinese “618” Promotion of 2019, Taobao Mobile's live streaming led to 13 billion yuan of sales. (CNNIC, 2019)
According to the survey of China Internet Network Information Center, by June 2019, the number of mobile online shopping users reached 620 million, increased by 29.89 million over 2018.(CNNIC, 2019) By March 2020, the number of live streaming users of mobile e-commerce has reached 265 million, accounting for 37% of the users of mobile e-commerce. (CNNIC, 2020) Live streaming users of mobile e-commerce can activate users' perceptual consumption and improve the purchase rate and user experience by introducing and displaying products and interacting with users in real time.
In e-commerce, the transformation of traffic is a consideration for all e-commerce platforms. The live streaming provided by Alibaba company takes e-commerce as the core, and by embedding the live streaming into mobile Taobao and Tmall applications, it provides users with the experience of “buying while watching”. With the convenience of mobile devices, users can watch live streaming anytime and anywhere. (Jiang Fan, 2018) The live streaming promotes the timely communication of information between buyers and sellers. At the same time, certain social relations will be also established in the live streaming of e-commerce for the reason of Internet celebrity so that on the role of Internet celebrity the transformation of traffic will be promoted. The short video social mobile application, Tiktok has been added mobile e-commerce system in to achieve traffic into funds. The novel coronavirus, COVID-19, emerged in China in early 2020. Under the government's strategy to respond to this crisis of the pandemic, most of the brick-and-mortar stores were suspended in China, which had an adverse impact on their sales. However, owing to no direct contact between people of the mobile e-commerce, some clothing and food brands launched relevant sales activities on the live streaming which had higher audience ratings. Although people stay at home to refrain from going outdoors as far as possible to avoid infection of COVID-19 in China, these applications help people experiencing the fun of shopping on the mobile equipment.
Compared with traditional e-commerce, main feature of mobile commerce is mobility implying portability. Users can browse e-commerce platform with mobile terminal immediately, if they want, not limited by time and place. Ubiquity, convenience, and personalization are also the features of mobile e-commerce. (Hillman & Neustaedter, 2017) The live streaming of mobile e-commerce also has these features. Using live streaming of mobile e-commerce,the buyer can also obtain three-dimensional visual information and auditory information, with the needs of certain social interaction satisfied at the same time compared with traditional e-commerce.