Malicious Selling Strategies in E-Commerce Livestream: A Case Study of Alibaba's Taobao and ByteDance's TikTok
This research addresses the problem of deceptive practices in livestream shopping for consumers and platforms, offering insights for policy and design improvements, though it is incremental in nature.
The study investigated malicious selling strategies in e-commerce livestreams on Taobao and TikTok, identifying 16 such strategies and finding that platform designs enhanced them, while interviews with 13 viewers revealed their awareness and challenges in overcoming these tactics.
Due to the limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, many users have shifted their shopping patterns from offline to online. Livestream shopping has become popular as one of the online shopping media. However, many streamers' malicious selling behaviors have been reported. In this research, we sought to explore streamers' malicious selling strategies and understand how viewers perceive these strategies. First, we recorded 40 livestream shopping sessions from two popular livestream platforms in China -- Taobao and TikTok (or "Douyin" in Chinese). We identified 16 malicious selling strategies and found that platform designs enhanced these malicious selling strategies. Second, through an interview study with 13 viewers, we provide a rich description of viewers' awareness of malicious selling strategies and the challenges they encountered while trying to overcome malicious selling. We conclude by discussing the policy and design implications of countering malicious selling.