Will Live Video Chat-Powered Sales/Service Assistance Backfire? The Significance of Private–Public Hypercontext

Abstract

Live video streaming is becoming prevalent in consumers’ mobile, digital consumption, and companies have increasingly adopted live video chat (LVC)-powered sales/service assistance to improve business outcomes and customer experiences. Our research demonstrates a substantive novel finding that consumers’ private (vs. public) hypercontext (physical place) during LVC dampens important LVC outcomes of purchase intention, customer satisfaction, and service quality. Consumers’ activation of persuasion knowledge underlies this effect, because consumers’ private (vs. public) hypercontext fails to provide adequate defense cognition to support consumers’ socially demanded public identity in LVC. To compensate for the lack of place defense, consumers activate their own defense cognition— persuasion knowledge. Furthermore, consumers’ sense of co-presence during LVC, low perceived risks, and high brand familiarity attenuate the negative effect of the private (vs. public) hypercontext on LVC outcomes. Empirically, we present four studies using mixed methods of analytical modelling, controlled and field experiments in the contexts of online retailing and financial services. Our findings extend the research on hypermedia and mobile, digital marketing. It also offers actionable guidelines for managing LVC-powered sales/service assistance.