Research On The Impact Of Short-Video Entrepreneurs’ Digital Performance

The new digital technology represented by the big data,cloud computing and algorithm has broken through the limitations of traditional entrepreneurship mode through digital platform,making digital entrepreneurship become the mainstream of current innovation and entrepreneurship.Thus,more and more entrepreneurs will choose to utilize digital technology or digital platform to carry out entrepreneurship.With the feature of easy use,wide audiences and low threshold,short-video social media platforms have gradually become a new entrepreneurial platform.Entrepreneurs can hang out the “store” linkage in their own homepage.When scanning the entrepreneur’s homepage,other users are likely to purchase the products in store through linkage,so as to improve their entrepreneurial performance.The improvement of entrepreneurial performance cannot be taken for granted.Only attracting more consumers to purchase the products in store through linkage,can the improvement of entrepreneurial performance can be realized.However,consumers may be reluctant to purchase the products due to they are worried about the quality of the product,so what online attributes of short-video entrepreneurs could persuade consumers to buy the product? And why would these characteristics persuade consumers to buy the product? These questions are still unsolved.Most current researches on digital entrepreneurs focused on the influence of digital context on entrepreneurial performance,however,there is a lack of understanding of mechanism of digital entrepreneurs’ entrepreneurial performance based on the specific platform.And,previous researches have mostly focused that the antecedents of general users’ short-video apps usage behaviors(such as participating,producing,and consuming),there is still a lack of research on digital entrepreneurs in the context of short-video platforms.Thus,in order to fill the existing research gap and provide implications for platforms and managers,it is important to answer the following questions: what online attributes of shortvideo entrepreneurs could persuade consumers to purchase the product?Hanging out the “store” linkage can be assumed as the product service.SERVQUAL model suggests assurance,reliability and responsiveness are important dimensions of service quality.Moreover,information foraging theory provides insight for investigating foragers’ decision-making process of searching information.To provide a baseline of decision-making for purchasing a high-quality product,foragers would combine cues to judge the quality of information source they have found.Therefore,this study tries to understand the roles of online attributes short-video entrepreneurs presented(i.e.,store information,entrepreneurs’ information,short-video information)on the product sales based on SERVQUAL model and information foraging theory.Moreover,social information foraging theory suggests an individual is influenced by the attitude or behavior of others.The number of likes,which represents trust,and social endorsement,which can affect the sensitivity of information.Based on social information foraging theory,this paper explains the moderating effect of the number of likes on the attributes displayed by entrepreneurs(such as store information,entrepreneurs’ information,short-video information)and the product sales.This research adopts a sequential triangulation mixed-methods approach by first analyzing secondary data from the homepage of short-video entrepreneur to test our hypotheses.Results show that information(overall review score,tenure as a store)presented by entrepreneurs’ online store,the information(the number of bio words)presented by entrepreneurs,and information(the number of videos)presented by entrepreneurs’ videos have accordingly positive effect on product sales.Moreover,the number of likes can enhance the relationship between overall review score,the number of bio words,the verification,the number of videos,and the professionalism of videos and product sales accordingly.Given the inherent problem of secondhand data,this study interviewed 20 short-video consumers to further understand whether and why the information entrepreneurs presented affect purchasing behavior.Qualitative results show that overall review score represents the products quality and user satisfaction,tenure as a store represents the product turnover and the number of consumers,the number of bio words means the possibility of business introduction business and store orientation,the verification represents the recognition and authority of platforms,the number of videos means update speed and willingness to operating store,the professionalism of videos represent the detail of introducing products and the efforts of operating store,and the number of likes means the entrepreneurs’ popularity.For consumers who purchase products directly through the “Recommendation” webpage,the qualitative results are consistent with the quantitative results.While for the consumers who follow the entrepreneur firstly and then purchase the products,the information the entrepreneur presented has a significant positive effect on the following behavior directly,and then affect their purchasing behavior.In the moderating effect,the number of likes positively affects consumers’ sensitivity to all information,and then positively affects their following behavior,finally affects their purchasing behavior.The findings of this paper can give some practical implications to the implementation of short-video platforms and entrepreneurs,and they can also contribute to literature about digital entrepreneurship and short-video social media platforms.Of course,there are still some limitations in current status of this study,and many works need to be done in future to improve and extend our findings.