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The number of individuals who accessed the Internet worldwide reached 4.95 billion by January 2022, or approximately 62.5% of the global total population, and China has the largest number of Internet users. By the end of 2021, the total number of Internet users reached 1.03 billion, with a penetration rate of 73%. The number of online shoppers reached 842 million, representing 81.6% of the total Internet user base. China’s e-commerce industry has been facilitated by the Internet’s widespread uses. Social media and mobile payments have enabled the transition of the traditional e-commerce industry to mobile social e-commerce. People who have become famous by means of the Internet become Internet celebrities who use the Internet as the main platform to spread their influence, and most of them applied their influence on marketing. Therefore, Internet celebrity marketing, and the economy that it has engendered, the Internet celebrity economy, are gradually emerging as a model for creating value on the Internet in contemporary mobile social e-commerce.
Internet celebrity marketing refers to the commercial behaviors involved in promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service online, including advertising, pushing, publicity, endorsement, hard sale, and boosterism. It is distinct from the conventional model of e-commerce in that it possesses the fundamental benefit of strong social attributes. These attributes allow for improved direct interaction with customers and the provision of users with a more varied shopping experience, particularly on the proviso that certain influencers maintain their silence (Wei et al., 2022).
In the early stages of the development of the Internet celebrity economy, Internet celebrities were likely promoted through social platforms, such as Weibo, using words and images. With the emergence of a large number of short video platforms, such as Douyin and YouTube, in recent years, live streaming commerce has gradually become a new growth driver for the Internet celebrity economy. Additionally, the spread of COVID-19 has contributed to the growth of the live streaming e-commerce industry. According to statistics, the king of live streaming, Li Jiaqi, who ranks among the top Internet celebrity live streamers, had total sales of 11.5 billion yuan on a single live streaming show during the Double Eleven pre-sale night in 2021. It is evident that the integration of Internet celebrities and e-commerce has increased the industry’s prospects. Meanwhile, the expansion of Internet celebrities’ market shares has increased their market competitiveness. We should pay more attention to its Internet user groups to conform to the current fad, and perhaps even to better withstand the Internet celebrity economy’s tide. In this situation, it is essential to understand how the ordering behavior of customers in live streaming rooms is affected, which has become a focus of both industry and academia.
Employing the most fundamental level of Internet celebrity marketing as a starting foothold, we establish the relevant dependent variables by analyzing the three primary aspects. These include individual characteristics of Internet celebrities, Internet celebrity marketing characteristics, and product features, all of which are most closely related (Park et al., 2020). On this basis, the most fundamental trust in the social and fan economy is applied as an intermediary variable to examine its impact on consumers’ final purchase intent. The findings presented in this paper have significant practical implications for advancing the growth of the Internet celebrity marketing industry.