Digital marketing impacts of live streaming platforms on customer engagement and consumer-based brand equity amongst online Chinese millennials

Abstract

The digital revolution, paired with the rise of live-streaming platforms like Douyin, Kuaishou, and Taobao Live, has reshaped the landscape of brand-consumer interactions, particularly among online Chinese millennials. This research aims to unpack the digital marketing implications of these platforms, focusing on their perceived ease of use and usefulness, and how these perceptions influence customer engagement and subsequently consumer-based brand equity. Utilizing a quantitative approach with online surveys collected from 300 Chinese millennial participants, this study scrutinized the relationship between the perceived usefulness and ease of use of these platforms toward consumer engagement across cognitive, emotional and behavioural dimensions. This further delved into the subsequent impacts of the multifaceted levels of customer engagement toward two customer-based brand equity under the aspects of brand trust and brand attitudes. Research results underscored the significant role of perceived usefulness in driving consumer engagement on live-streaming platforms. Moreover, platforms that aligned seamlessly with users' expectations of ease saw enhanced engagement metrics. The gathered survey data unearthed a pronounced correlation between the multiple levels of customer engagement toward both brand trust and brand attitude. The way consumers interacted with brands, whether cognitively, emotionally, or behaviourally, bore a distinct influence on their attitudes towards those brands. In essence, heightened engagement often paved the way for more positive brand sentiments, hinting at a roadmap to sustained brand loyalty.