Research On The Channel Selection And Coupon Distribution Strategy Of Livestream Marketing For Brand Merchants

The rapid development of live e-commerce has led consumers to gradually form the consumer demand of "goods looking for people" and the shopping habit of "buying while shopping".Brand merchants are faced with the need to set up additional live channels to provide consumers with personalized shopping guides and real-time interactive communication to enhance consumer satisfaction and promote merchandise sales.In addition,brand merchants also need to develop their promotional strategies in the livestreaming channel to quickly break through the problem of attracting traffic,improve the live conversion rate,and gain a competitive advantage in the live e-commerce market.Therefore,how to choose a reasonable livestream marketing channel model and how to formulate preferential promotion strategies have become the key for brand merchants to develop livestreaming e-commerce.This paper firstly focuses on the selection strategy of brand merchant’s livestream marketing channel mode,introduces the consumer fairness concern coefficient,and builds the Stackelberg game model between brand a merchant and an anchor,and explores the channel selection strategies of the brand merchant in the face of equity-conscious consumers,and conducts sensitivity analysis of consumer fairness concern coefficient.Secondly,the decision problem of brand merchant regarding coupon issuance under the livestreaming channel is studied,considers the influence of direct and cross network externality and anchor effort level on brand merchant’s coupon issuance decision and consumer’s purchase decision,establishes the evolutionary game models of brand merchants and consumers under two channel models,and analyzes the evolutionary stabilization strategy of coupon issuance decision.Finally,the paper investigates the coupon denomination design strategy for the livestreaming channel.The Stackelberg game model with different master-slave relationships between a brand merchant and an anchor is constructed under two channel models,obtains the optimal coupon denominations under different power structures,and compares the different game equilibria by theoretical and numerical analysis.The research shows that :(1)The channel selection strategy of brand merchant depends on the fairness concerns of consumers and the selling cost of unit products under the self-built live broadcast channel.When consumers are more aware of fairness concerns and the selling cost of unit products is larger for self-built livestreaming channel,brand merchant chooses the agent-based livestreaming channel model as his optimal strategy;on the contrary,brand merchant prefers to choose to build his own livestreaming channel.(2)The decision of whether to distribute coupons is affected by direct and cross network externalities as well as the effort level of the anchor.Under the agent-based livestreaming dual channel,the smaller the direct network externality of brand merchants and the larger the cross network externality of consumers will make the "distributing coupon" decision reaches equilibrium faster.Under the self-built livestreaming dual channel,the more consumers cross network externalities will make the " distributing coupon " decision reaches equilibrium faster.For both dual channels,the reduction of the anchor’s effort level will make the decision reaches equilibrium faster.(3)The optimal denomination design strategy of coupons of brand merchant is related to the livestreaming channels and the market position of game players.Under the agent-based livestreaming dual channel,the coupon denomination formulated by the strong anchor is larger than the coupon denomination when the brand merchant is strong;under the selfbuilt livestreaming dual channel,the coupon denomination formulated by different strong subjects is affected by consumers’ preference for the livestreaming channel and the selling cost of unit products.