讲座题目：Turning the wheels of engagement: Evidence from entertainment live streaming

讲座人：Zhao Cai博士

主持人：李凯 教授

讲座时间：2024年5月10日10:30

讲座地点：南开大学商学院A501-2

讲座摘要：

Influencers (e.g., live streamers) earn gratuities from engaging customers, a phenomenon that we label as engagement monetization. Although scholars have advocated a process view of customer engagement, they tend to accentuate unidirectional transitions from low- to high-engagement-level states. This constrains influencers’ understanding of customer engagement, which in turn inhibits their ability to both trigger profitable states of engagement as well as prevent deteriorating states of engagement from manifesting. To this end, we extend extant literature by conceptualizing customer engagement as an emergent process that embodies engagement states and engagement transitions. Empirically, we conduct an illustrative study in the context of entertainment live streaming and subscribe to the Markov chain method to showcase how customer engagement transition can be modeled. Based on 91,148 engagement records, we scrutinize the effects of influencers’ scheduling strategy on engagement transitions and viewers’ gratuities using the Multilevel Linear Model (MLM). Findings yield practical implications for influencers in terms of how live streaming sessions can be strategically scheduled to bolster customer engagement and monetization opportunities.

讲座人简介：

Dr. Zhao Cai is an Associate Professor in Information Systems at University of Nottingham Ningbo China. His research interests focus on digital supply chain management, platform competition, and digital health. Findings from his research have appeared in leading journals such as MIS Quarterly (MISQ), Journal of Operations Management (JOM), Journal of Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS), Journal of Association for Information Systems (JAIS), and International Journal of Operations and Production Management (IJOPM), among others. Dr. Cai serves as the Managing Editor of Industrial Management & Data Systems (IMDS) and an Associate Editor for Internet Research (IR). Additionally, he has served as a Track Chair for the Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS) and the Wuhan International Conference on E-Business (WHICEB), a Mini-track Chair of the Americas' Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), and an Associate Editor for the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) and the European Conference of Information Systems (ECIS).