Product Pricing and Channel Strategies under the AI Live-Streaming

Against the backdrop of AI live-streaming technology increasingly empowering e-commerce sales, enterprises that primarily rely on traditional channels face strategic choices when expanding into live-streaming: whether to adopt human live-streaming or AI live-streaming. Drawing on these two dual-channel models, this paper examines firms′ decisions regarding channel adoption as well as the corresponding optimal pricing strategies. The main findings are as follows: 1) When the setup cost of AI live-streaming is low and consumers′ initial information level of the product is limited, firms are more likely to adopt AI live-streaming. Conversely, when the setup cost of AI live-streaming is high and the commission rate for human anchors is low, firms prefer human live-streaming. In other scenarios, firms are unlikely to introduce live-streaming channels. 2) Under both the single traditional e-commerce channel and the “traditional e-commerce + AI live-streaming” dual-channel model, market demand remains unchanged, whereas the “traditional e-commerce + human live-streaming” model can effectively stimulate demand. 3) The price in the live-streaming channel is not necessarily lower than that in the traditional channel. Moreover, enhancing consumers′ product knowledge does not always translate into higher profits for firms.