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For some, live shopping — the e-commerce format still looking to gain a foothold in the United States — is simply the QVC-style home-shopping model adapted for the digital era. 

But others believe it’s much more than that, including Maggie Adhami-Boynton, founder and chief executive of Canada-based live shopping platform ShopThing Inc., who described live shopping as the “intersection of entertainment and commerce.” Consumers engage with it in a “totally different manner” than other types of promotional content, she told Morning Consult. 

More technically, live shopping is a sales strategy in which companies employ a host — often an influencer or celebrity — to promote a product through a real-time online video feed, from which consumers can directly purchase. Live shopping streams most often take place on social media apps like Meta Platforms Inc.’s Instagram and Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube, but they can be hosted just about anywhere, from third-party publishing platforms to brands’ and retailers’ own websites. Chat and reaction features, which allow viewers to interact with the host, are commonplace within these livestreamed events. 

Successful in China since the mid-2010s, live shopping remains more of a mystery in Western markets, where its viability remains a major question, according to interviews with e-commerce experts and a new Morning Consult survey of U.S. consumers. But that hasn’t stopped some brands from betting on its growth as the retail industry enters 2023. 

From beginning to boom 

When the Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.-owned online marketplace Taobao introduced a live shopping function in 2016, Chinese consumers took to it almost immediately. Following Taobao’s success, other livestream operations serving different niches and regions began popping up throughout the country. 

Scott Moskowitz, APAC geopolitical risk analyst at Morning Consult, said the format received a warm reception because it combines two elements central to China’s shopping culture: aspiration and education. 

“Every generation is getting richer as China continues to develop, and consumers there are looking to cement or reinvent their identity, which frequently includes shopping for new products,” Moskowitz said. “They’re also still very much learning how to shop and evolve their tastes.” 

Seeing items demonstrated in real time by live shopping hosts, many of whom receive support from Chinese talent agencies and are known for their unique personal brands, neatly satisfies both of these consumer desires. 

“Commerce in China has really evolved alongside the internet, making shoppers there more likely to embrace burgeoning retail technologies than in other parts of the world,” he added.

The industry grew steadily until 2020, when the pandemic forced consumers to stay at — and shop from — home. It then didn’t take live shopping long to truly explode in China, culminating in an expected annual revenue of more than $500 billion this year.

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