Malicious Selling Strategies in Livestream Shopping: A Case Study of Alibaba's Taobao and ByteDance's Douyin
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Livestream shopping is getting more and more popular as a new shopping form. Also, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people have shifted to online shopping platforms. However, the broader user adoption comes with a cost – many streamers' malicious selling incidents have recently been reported. In this study, we aim to explore streamers' malicious selling strategies and how viewers may perceive these strategies. First, we collected 40 livestream shopping sessions from two popular livestream platforms in China – Taobao and Douyin (TikTok of Chinese version). We identified three categories of malicious selling strategies (i.e., Compulsive, Restrictive, and Designing) and found platform designs mostly enhanced these malicious selling strategies. Second, through an interview study with 13 end users, we provide a rich description of users' awareness of malicious selling strategies and challenges to counter malicious selling. We conclude the paper by discussing the policy and design implications to counter malicious selling.
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