The art and impact of narrative: How streamer narrative styles shape consumers’ purchase intention

Now, live e-commerce has increasingly become a primary channel for consumer purchases. As the core of live e-commerce, streamers play a pivotal role in influencing consumer decisions and driving sales performance. However, previous scholars mainly focus on single dimensions such as personal characteristics, language style, and interaction type but rarely pay attention to the process of how streamers introduce products to the audience and prompt them to make purchases. To address this issue, this paper employs an innovative mixed-methods approach. First, a qualitative study categorizes streamer narrative styles into three types: Professional introduction narrative, Entertainment interaction narrative, and Scene storytelling narrative. Subsequently, a quantitative study explores the interaction effects between streamer narrative styles and product types. The findings reveal that for search products, the professional introduction and scene storytelling styles are more effective in increasing purchase intention compared to the entertainment interaction style. Similarly, for experience products, the professional introduction and entertainment interaction styles also outperform scene storytelling style in driving consumers' purchase intention. Finally, drawing on flow theory, this paper validates the mediating role of flow experience in the relationship between streamer narrative styles and consumers’ purchase intention.