Abstract

Retailing is experiencing critical innovations in many areas. Livestream shopping (LS) is one of these innovations that combines shopping and social media. Experts predict LS to capture considerable share of retail sales rapidly as it has already done in China. This study reports the results of two surveys involving the relative importance of attributes of LS sites for generation Z because they are likely to be included in the early target segments. The first survey involves an application of the Case 2 Best-Worst Scaling (BWS2) (MaxDiff) to measure the relative attractiveness (utility) of LS attributes and their levels on an interval scale. Both the modeling approach based on random utility theory and the so called “counting approach” are used to analyze the BWS2 data to derive importance scales. They can be used as a guideline in the design of LS sites for generation Z. The results also suggest gender differences in perceived relative importance. These differences can be instrumental in differentiated market targeting. The second survey deals with the general shopping styles of generation Z consumers who participated in the first survey. It is hypothesized that general shopping styles will affect preferences for various attributes of LS sites. A factor analysis of the collected data suggests nine shopping styles with mean factor score differences for genders in four factors. The factors with higher mean factor scores for females help interpret the higher importance of a subset of the LS attributes for females. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.