Live shopping as a participatory spectacle: The intersection of user practices,platform affordances and governance regimes in the repurposing of TikTok LIVE for e-commerce

Abstract

Although the formal integration of e-commerce through TikTok Shop has not yet been fully launched in Europe, users leverage other platform affordances, such as livestreaming, to facilitate shopping. In the Netherlands, TikTok LIVE serves as a hybrid space where entertainment, interaction and commerce come together, exemplifying the platformisation of consumer culture on social media. This article examines how streamers and viewers stage shopping as an interactive, participatory spectacle during Black Friday week, exploiting the governance arrangements that regulate livestreaming. Based on qualitative textual analysis of 131 LIVE sessions across 80 accounts, we observe and document how e-commerce unfolds both within and beyond the app. First, we identify norms of interactions and self-governance of shopping across three formats: live auctions mediated via chat, external sales directing users to websites and community-driven giveaways that reward previous buyers. Second, we analyse roles performed by users during LIVEs, highlighting a range from charismatic influencers to transaction-oriented sellers, and the division of labour among streamers, moderators and viewers. Finally, we reflect on the implications of these practices for consumer law, highlighting how the temporality, emotional engagement, self-surveillance and commercial orientation, which are fundamental to the live shopping phenomenon, are enabled by the legal uncertainty regarding TikTok's role.

Introduction

Social media platforms have long functioned as commercial spaces where consumption cultures are promoted and highly visible, exemplified by the advertising business model that they rely upon. Until recently, completing a purchase required users to leave the social space where advertisers, brands and influencers had first stimulated consumer interest. The integration of e-commerce into social media has disrupted this dynamic, keeping the entire shopping experience within their platform. Platforms, such as TikTok, represent a convergence of social media with online marketplaces. This merging blurs the boundaries between entertainment, interaction and commerce, leading to what Goanta (2022) calls ‘the New Social Media’. Although TikTok Shop has not yet been fully launched in Europe, users already exploit other platform affordances, such as livestreaming, to enter transactions with one another and shop on platform.

Livestreaming is the synchronous interaction between streamers who produce content in real time and viewers who join and engage with the stream. As streamers integrate commercial strategies into their livestreaming practices (Cunningham et al., 2019), they produce a distinct promotional form of advertainment (Zhao et al., 2023). While existing research has explored live shopping facilitated by platforms, this article looks at a different phenomenon: how livestreaming is leveraged by users in the absence of formal e-commerce infrastructure. We use the term user to refer to any actor accessing TikTok through an account, distinguishing between specific categories: the streamer who hosts the livestream, the viewer who watches and engages with the livestream and the moderator who is a viewer assigned by the streamer to assist with management of the livestream. In the context of live shopping, streamers act as sellers and viewers who purchase through the livestream are buyers.

Our case study is the Netherlands, where TikTok Shop was not available at the time of data collection. Based on qualitative textual analysis of 131 TikTok LIVE sessions during Black Friday week, we focus on how shopping is co-constructed as a participatory spectacle and analyse how LIVEs are staged to create different consumer experiences. With this as a starting point, our work addresses the conditions of shoppability in the platform society. Hund and McGuigan (2019) developed the concept of shoppability to capture the affordances that enable the direct purchase of products visible in online ads or content. We broaden this definition, approaching shopping as an experience shaped by anticipation, ritual and the temporalities of liveness. Shopping here is not only about transactions: it is staged as entertainment and co-constructed through performances and interactions between users. Rather than the bilateralism of traditional e-commerce, it can be understood in the tradition of media spectacles (Kellner, 2003) and configurations of liveness (Couldry, 2003) in what we see is a new form of the platformisation of consumer cultures (Caliandro et al., 2024b).

Due to the way streamers utilise TikTok's infrastructure and affordances, as well as other platforms and websites in our platform society, we identify live shopping on TikTok as a grey area that evades easy legal classification. When streamers showcase and seek to sell products on TikTok LIVE, they may legally qualify as traders, and viewers become interpellated as consumers. This triggers the application of consumer protection rules in the EU, placing legal obligations on both streamers as traders and on the platform in its role as an intermediary. Even without TikTok Shop, the in-app browser allows viewers to complete purchases without leaving the platform, becoming an informal social marketplace (Aade, 2025a). Beyond mandatory law, TikTok also sets its own private governance framework (Gillespie, 2018; Gorwa, 2019), determining what kinds of streaming and selling are permitted and generating conditions in which streamers and viewers alike engage in this co-construction of shopping.

This article opens with our theoretical framework, which brings together the penetration of commercial content on social media platforms, shoppability affordances, business models of livestreaming and platform governance. We then outline our research approach, methods of data collection and analysis. Our findings are structured around a typology of selling formats and the performance of roles by streamers and viewers, in which we draw attention to how users govern shoppability through their articulation of rules, co-construction of norms and cultivation of practices to sell not only products but the right feelings. We close with a reflection on consumer law implications of our findings and assess the role of TikTok as the governor of live shopping, shaping how e-commerce can be organised, experienced and exploited on the platform.

Platformisation of shoppability

The development of social media can be traced through the intensification of consumer culture and the integration of shoppability into platform design and business models. Consumer cultures refer to the way in which the consumption of goods and services, mediated by markets, shapes sociocultural practices, identities and meaning-making (Arnould and Thompson, 2005). As Caliandro et al. (2024b) argue, these practices have become platformised, a phenomenon we observe unfolding over different periods in relation to the concept of shoppability. Hund and McGuigan (2019) consider that the affordances which enable the direct purchasing of products visible in ads or online content cultivate a shoppability logic. In particular, they show how influencers encode aspects of the marketplace, through their performance of an aspirational lifestyle reliant on purchasable consumer goods in content. In essence, these actors produce a so-called ‘shoppable life’ on platforms. More broadly, we see the orientation towards shopping as an experience and cultivation of anticipation for purchasing as promoted across platforms and users, including but not limited to influencers, as social media matures over time.

The adoption of the traditional advertising-based business model by social media platforms marks the beginning of these spaces as a means to attract consumer attention. By collecting and aggregating user data to target advertising, users encounter paid platform ads while navigating connectivity and user-generated content (van Dijck, 2013; Zuboff, 2019). TikTok makes this explicit, promising advertisers that they can ‘turn tuned-in audiences into high-value customers’ (TikTok for Business, 2025a). In other words, a cultivation of shoppability underlies the logic of advertising, as the platform offers optimisation solutions to advertisers and delivers ads to users premised on the cultivation of desire.

The intensification of consumer culture and integration of shoppability in platforms is even more evident through the circulation of commercial content. Through their accounts, brands and influencers promote goods and services to audiences both for their own businesses and on behalf of third parties. Carah et al. (2023) describe this as the optimisation of consumer desire and circulation of goods on Instagram. Within the ‘programmed flow of the mall’, consumers scroll through both content from brands and ads paid for by brands, all of which encourage purchasing. In particular, we draw attention to the development of the creator economy and the integration of advertising through influencer marketing within this flow. Because influencers cultivate communicative intimacies with their followers (Abidin, 2015) and authentic, relatable self-brands through their content (Abidin, 2016; Duffy, 2017; Hund, 2023; Hund and McGuigan, 2019), their endorsements of products, services and brands are highly valued, ushering in native advertising that can be highly lucrative for both brands and influencers.

While influencer marketing is negotiated through the bourgeoning intermediary industry of marketing and talent agencies, platforms are also bringing it in-house. TikTok's One Creator Marketplace positions itself as an ‘all-in-one’ creative platform that facilitates creator discovery, collaboration and performance. Brands can search for influencers that meet their campaign objectives, oversee the production and payment process, and analyse the performance of content. These partnerships, as promoted to businesses, ‘empower you to advertise’, firmly situating the creative process, analytics and ‘power of TikTok creators’ in the commercial sphere (TikTok for Business, 2025b). In this sense, influencers’ commercial content, potentially facilitated by platforms, marks an intersection of shoppability with authenticity and personality anchored in their personal identities and curated selves (Hund and McGuigan, 2019). Platforms thus operate not only as spaces of entertainment, education and connection where users encounter influencer content but also as infrastructures that incentivise and structure commercial collaborations between influencers and brands.

Beyond this, platforms increasingly merge their core service – social networking and algorithmic distribution of content – with that of online marketplaces. This process, known as social media commerce, marks the integration of e-commerce into the social media environment, enabling transactions to be completed within the platform itself (Aade, 2025a). In China's wanghong industry, social commerce is well developed: direct sales occur through content by both brands and wanghong (Craig et al., 2021). Here, shoppability reaches its most visible expression, where consumption is not only promoted through content but actively facilitated through platform functionalities. This development exemplifies that Goanta (2022) dubs the ‘New Social Media’, as the historical division between social networks and online marketplaces has now become blurred. Social marketplaces, as Aade (2025a) theorises, are a new category of online platforms, which may be formalised through full integration of e-commerce or partially formalised through the combination of product discovery on a platform with payment processing through an in-app browser.

TikTok Shop is ‘the fully integrated commercial solution’ of TikTok, promising ‘to drive meaningful shopping experiences’ through ‘frictionless checkout’ and authentic connections with the community (TikTok for Business, 2023). The showcasing of products by sellers and influencers takes place through Shop Tabs, Shop Pages, Shoppable Videos, Shop Ads and Live Shopping. The authenticity and connectivity central to the creator economy, combined with the optimisation logics of targeted advertising, are redeployed in this context, generating new forms of e-commerce. TikTok Shop not only seeks to retain users within the platform economy, in line with the imperatives of the attention economy (Terranova, 2012) but also extends into the adjacent marketplace sector, diversifying its services. Its rollout has been staggered: Indonesia (2021–2023; 2024), UK (2021), Malaysia (April 2022), Philippines (April 2022), Singapore (August 2022), Thailand (2022), Vietnam (2022), USA (September 2023), Ireland (December 2024), Spain (December 2024), Mexico (February 2025), France (March 2025), Italy (March 2025) and Germany (March 2025).

Although not yet available in the Netherlands, user practices nevertheless mobilise elements of the platform ecosystem, namely, TikTok LIVE, to enable commerce and transform shoppability into a participatory spectacle. Conceptualising live shopping as a spectacle draws on Debord (2014)’s theorisation of the ‘society of the spectacle’, in which consumer society is organised around the production and consumption of images and commodities. Shopping staged through livestreaming reflects what Kellner (2003) terms ‘seductive spectacles’, blending entertainment, information and consumption. The affordances of liveness invite immersion in this multimedia image culture, positioning live shopping as an interactive and performative spectacle of consumption.

Monetisation through livestreaming

Central to the co-construction of shopping as a participatory spectacle is the livestreaming environment. TikTok LIVE, launched in August 2020, allows creators and viewers to interact in real time – or, in TikTok's terms, to ‘go LIVE’. The introduction of a dedicated LIVE feed, multi-guest streaming, virtual gifting, subscriptions and shopping functions in certain markets exemplifies what Kaye et al. (2021) call ‘parallel platformisation’. This concept addresses the co-evolution of the platforms, TikTok and Douyin, which operate in global and Chinese contexts respectively and are owned by parent company ByteDance. The core products are adapted and integrated onto both platforms in parallel due to the different cultural and regulatory settings. TikTok's livestreaming can therefore be situated within advanced models of social commerce first tested in China, where gifting and live shopping are deeply embedded.

Couldry (2003) defines liveness as social co-presence: a mediated connection with others and their realities as they unfold. This may involve invisible audiences or group participation where consumption is visible. Platforms make it possible to produce, access and experience these constructions of liveness. Cunningham and Craig (2019) and Taylor (2018) highlight the synchronous interactivity of livestreaming, where visible commenting intensifies participation. As Meisner and Ledbetter (2022) note, this fosters closeness and authenticity, although interactions remain asymmetric (Ye et al., 2023). While streamers respond vocally and physically, viewers engage through typing, liking or gifting – approximate substitutes for face-to-face communication.

This cross-model interaction is enlisted for monetisation purposes. Since early livestreaming practices such as webcamming, intimacy has had commercial value (Senft, 2008). Livestreaming enables distinctive monetisation through virtual gifting (Zhang et al., 2019), a voluntary mechanism tied to relational labour but structured by gamified hierarchies of gifts that push streamers towards competitive, profit-maximising behaviours. These dynamics reflect the standardisation of consumer culture under platformisation (Caliandro et al., 2024b). On Twitch, Partin (2020) shows how interface design fosters streamer dependence by privileging its own monetisation tools. TikTok deploys similar logics: users buy coins with real money to send gifts, which streamers convert to diamonds and cash out at roughly half the purchase value. Framing this system as ‘gifting’ obscures its nature as labour, downplaying the platform's obligations to compensate influencers fairly (Annabell et al., 2025).

E-commerce represents another monetisation avenue. Streamers integrate commercial strategies into their practice (Cunningham et al., 2019), producing what Zhao et al. (2023) describe as advertainment, or what TikTok itself labels as shoppertainment (TikTok, 2025). Platforms capitalise on the intersection of livestreaming and influencer culture to stage promotional livestreams that rely on intimacy and community-building, reminiscent of older formats such as television home shopping. Livestreaming also entails diverse forms of labour. Duan et al. (2023) show how, in rural China, it is framed as a ‘techno-entrepreneurial solution’ where streamers sell agricultural products by performing rural authenticity. This work involves both alignment with platform rhythms (long hours of streaming) and physical tasks (packaging and shipping) to sustain promises of speed and efficiency. Zhao et al. (2023) further identify temporal strategies: streamers generate urgency by emphasising time limits, resonating with Coleman (2018)’s theorisation of multiple ‘nows’ produced by digital media – immediate, compressed or elongated. Attending to temporality thus highlights how shopping spectacles are constructed not only by real-time interaction but also by orchestrated rhythms of performance.

Finally, livestream shopping must be understood in relation to older selling practices. Ki et al. (2024) argue that livestream shopping differs by emphasising relationship-building with consumers. Yet as earlier studies of home shopping channels show (Stephens et al., 1996), hosts similarly used conversational techniques and parasocial cues – sharing personal details or asking questions – to foster connection despite limited audience interaction. The challenge, therefore, is not to overstate the novelty of livestream shopping but to situate it within longer trajectories of commercial performance, intimacy and mediated consumption.

Governance of online commercial practices

How livestreaming takes place on TikTok and can be used by streamers and viewers is regulated by the private governance regime of the platform, as well as legal frameworks that apply to platforms and traders. We adopt a platform governance perspective, drawing attention to two interconnected yet different regimes: the governance of and by platforms. On the one hand, users are subject to the private governance of TikTok, which regulates access to and use of the platform (Gillespie, 2018; Gorwa, 2019), including what and how streaming and selling can be enacted through documentation, platform design and moderation. On the other hand, the power of TikTok to establish its own private governance framework is limited by mandatory law, including platform liability, and streamers who qualify as traders are subject to consumer law that ensures consumers are legally protected.

At its core, consumer protection law is designed to safeguard individuals acting as consumers – that is, people who engage in commercial transactions for personal use rather than for business purposes. It seeks to address the structural imbalance between professional sellers (traders) and ordinary buyers by imposing duties on traders (Reich and Micklitz, 2014). These obligations include providing clear information about the good or service being sold, avoiding misleading or aggressive selling tactics and respecting rights such as withdrawal or refund. When viewers on TikTok LIVE transition from audiences to consumers and when streamers become traders, this transition triggers the application of this body of law. The Consumer Rights Directive (CRD), for instance, is designed to guarantee that consumers receive essential pre-contractual information before making a purchase, including the identity of the trader, the total price and withdrawal rights (Hall et al., 2012). The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD) complements this framework by prohibiting misleading and aggressive practices that distort consumers’ economic behaviour, thereby ensuring that transactions are based on informed and fair choices (Howells et al., 2006).

What responsibility platforms have for facilitating consumer transactions is complicated when it comes to informal social marketplaces. In the Netherlands, the absence of a formal launch of TikTok Shop means transactions do not occur through the integrated e-commerce infrastructure of TikTok but are instead redirected through to their websites or direct messaged links to Instagram, Vinted or other external channels. In other words, TikTok provides a communicative and promotional environment in which sales are arranged, without facilitating payment or contract conclusion through its in-app browser. From a governance of platforms perspective, it is challenging to determine whether TikTok should be legally treated as an ‘online marketplace’ with the corresponding consumer protection duties, or merely as an intermediary hosting user-generated content. This distinction matters because EU consumer law, particularly the CRD and UCPD, was developed with traditional online marketplaces in mind, such as Amazon or eBay. When social media platforms integrate e-commerce features that are equivalent to traditional e-commerce platforms, they too can be understood as qualifying as online marketplaces (Aade, 2025a).

This paper aims to understand the practices that emerge in the context of uncertainty regarding the legal classification of live shopping on TikTok and the platform's responsibility. Research on streaming and influencer culture has yet to fully situate user practices within legal regimes that regulate commercial activity or engage deeply with how selling and e-commerce are integrated into these practices. Conversely, work on platform governance has largely overlooked issues of content monetisation when it comes to regulation and moderation and, more specifically, livestreaming as a distinct type of content production and interaction requires investigation. To fill this gap, we address how selling takes place, the distribution of roles and responsibilities and practices that allow shopping to be an entertaining, engaging and commercially viable niche of content production in the Netherlands.

Research design

To examine how online selling is performed through TikTok LIVE, we focus on how users co-constructed selling as a participatory spectacle during Black Friday week in the Netherlands. We consider Black Friday (29 November 2024) as a valuable anchor for data collection, given its association with sales and promotions. Although originating in the USA, Black Friday has been widely adopted in the Netherlands as a marketing strategy (ABN Amro, 2025) and is formally integrated into TikTok Shop outside Europe (TikTok, 2024).

As a case study, the Netherlands is also useful for exploring the phenomenon of shoppability in the context of livestreaming because of the uptake of social media and e-commerce within the population. According to the reported average monthly active recipients in the July to December 2024 period that very large online platforms are obligated to report on, there were 6.3 million TikTok accounts (TikTok, 2025), 11.7 million Instagram accounts (Meta, 2025), 35.2 million YouTube accounts (Google, 2025) and 6.06 million Snapchat accounts (Snap, 2025) in the Netherlands. Given its population of 18.05 million in 2024 (Statistics Netherlands, 2025), this suggests a widespread adoption of social media, including TikTok. Furthermore, an appetite for e-commerce is indicated by 6.03 million Amazon (2025), 10.69 million AliExpress (2025) and 4.6 million Temu (2024) recipients in the Netherlands and 94% of the population classified as an e-shopper in 2024, the second highest rate within 38 countries in Europe (Eurostat, 2025). This familiarity with and practice of purchasing online, coupled with the active use of TikTok, informs the dynamics of buyers and sellers on TikTok LIVEs in the Netherlands, potentially rendering users receptive to the use of the platform for social commerce.

Our research design draws on a qualitative approach to digital methods, in which researchers are implored to follow the medium, follow the traces and follow the users to explore the platformisation of consumer culture (Caliandro et al., 2024a). This guided our data collection using purposive sampling to make use of TikTok's algorithmic recommendations on LIVE. To operationalise this, one researcher created a new TikTok account on a refurbished iPhone, selecting topics related to shopping in the account creation phase. We ‘trained the algorithm’ for a week by ‘performing ad hoc patterns of navigation’ (Caliandro et al., 2024a), such as watching and engaging with relevant lives, following accounts and searching keywords. Relevance was determined by language (English or Dutch), evidence of selling during LIVE and the absence of the pop-up ‘The products in this LIVE aren’t available for purchase in your region’, which indicates the livestream was using TikTok Shop. Since LIVEs also host activities such as gaming or community interaction, we deliberately navigated the selling ‘side’ of TikTok (Maddox and Gill, 2023), recognising TikTok as ‘content-centric, rather than network-centric’ (Kaye et al., 2022: 19) algorithmic recommendation system.

We observed TikTok LIVE sessions three times per day (morning, afternoon and evening) in the days preceding and following Black Friday in 2024 (25 November–2 December) through the LIVE feed. This aligns with how Lindof and Shatzer (1998) propose studying synchronous media through observing communication in real time. After encountering a relevant LIVE in which the streamer promoted selling, we made notes on what was observed during the LIVE, focusing on performances of streamers, use of chat function by users and audiovisual elements, including digital banners produced by streamers, interactional traces by users and signs displayed in video and sound notifications. We also traced the consumer transaction by moving from the LIVE to the TikTok account profile to links in bios and other websites or platforms, based on where streamers directed purchasers in the LIVE to allow us to ‘follow’ the shopping experience. Across the 8-day period, we observed 131 TikTok LIVE sessions from 80 accounts (22 h 37 min). As Figure 1 shows, the number of users participating in the LIVE when the researcher joined varied (as indicated by the size of the bubble), as did the number of followers (as indicated by the colour).

Figure 1.

TikTok LIVE sessions observed in 8 days across three time periods.

The notes and materials were used in the iterative process of analysis, where codes and themes were developed across LIVEs. Screen recordings of the observed LIVE sessions enabled us to return to pertinent moments that emerged through our analysis process. Most LIVEs were in Dutch; we used the Microsoft Translator app to translate audio to English. Our findings address how TikTok LIVE is used for online selling and what roles users perform during LIVEs, drawing attention to how these performances and practices constitute self-governance, and this informs the issues of platform governance we reflect on.

Analysis: commerce as a participatory spectacle

Typology of live shopping formats

Our analysis first examines how TikTok LIVE is utilised in online selling. We identify three approaches employed by streamers: (a) live auctions, where consumers compete in the chat to claim items available during the LIVE; (b) external sales, where streamers display products and direct consumers to websites for purchase; and (c) community-driven giveaways, where buying from the seller grants eligibility for prizes, encouraging consumers to return and engage. Although implemented differently, these approaches illustrate how streamers and audiences co-construct norms of interaction and selling within LIVEs, establishing governance of shoppability from below. These formats are significant because TikTok's livestreaming policies restrict how streamers can redirect traffic outside of the livestream. This necessitates creativity in how streamers encourage off-platform purchasing. Across the 131 observed sessions, streamers demonstrated the versatility of TikTok LIVE as a sales channel. As Figure 2 shows, these three approaches often overlapped and were used across a range of consumer goods.

Figure 2.

Distribution of shopping formats across observed live sessions.

Live auctions

In our first shopping format, streamers present viewers with the exclusive opportunity to make purchases through an auction in the livestream. This involves streamers (a) presenting the item, often with minimal verbal detail but visual emphasis; (b) inviting users to express their intention to buy by typing ‘cl’, ‘claimed’ or the assigned number in the chat; (c) determining who the successful purchasers are; (d) recording claims with improvised methods, such as sticky notes or labelled bags; and (e) directing consumers to complete payments via external websites or platforms, distributed via DM or links in bio. The total cost of items is bundled together and labelled with the user's name, with only limited descriptions of items.

In live auctions, the real-time interaction fosters a sense of anticipation and urgency, contributing to the exclusivity of the selling and purchasing experience in the livestream. Streamers build suspense through slowly introducing the item and showcasing its desirability, which contrasts with the temporality produced through the claiming process in which speed is privileged, especially in instances in which one-off items are being sold. As one streamer puts it, when a viewer comments they missed out on an item they wanted, users need ‘fingers on the button’ in order to be the first. In competitive auctions, moderators help streamers to determine who is successful in their claim by pinning comments so the streamer can focus on selling rather than scrolling through comments. Streamers and moderators adopt positions of power, then, in deciding who gets to purchase items, and the fairness of this process is sometimes undermined by misidentification of who commented first. Alongside this rapid pace, which shapes the staging of buying as a dynamic, participatory spectacle, the repetition of the process in the LIVE also fosters a sense of rhythm and familiarity. This means that chat activity that surges in competitive auctions is balanced by streamers building in time for users to ask questions before the claiming process or engage in chat not about the auction, enabling a multiplicity of temporalities to be experienced.

Coupled with the speed and pace, presence in the LIVE is required for users to access auctions and, thus, the items being sold. In one observed session, a viewer indicates they would like to purchase the outfit the streamer is wearing. After being told by the streamer that it would appear later, others in the chat also reminded everyone that specific clothing on-screen could only be claimed in the moment. The viewer comments ‘not everyone can watch all day’. As they point out, time investment and co-presence are thus fundamental to the viability of this shopping format. The streamer responds to the chat activity, ‘Ladies, we will keep it friendly’. This intervention suggests how discussion about the demands placed on consumers is interpreted as a complaint that needs to be minimised and managed. The need for ‘friendliness’ in tone relegates questions about the format as unwelcome, and in doing so, one of the expectations governing interaction in this livestream environment is alluded to. Critically, the expectation that not only potential consumers should be able and willing to join livestreams but an affective register of positivity that should be maintained is co-constructed by both the streamer and other viewers.

Understanding the process of the live auction and learning about governance practices requires immersion within the livestream. Because users can join at any point during a livestream, newcomers arrive throughout the showcasing, claiming and confirming processes of the live auction or casual discussion between streamers and viewers interspersed. In live auctions, limited information is visible, necessitating newcomers to ask questions or be recognised by the streamer as new to be informed. In an auction in which new women's clothing was being sold, the latter occurs with the streamer asked a claimant if they were familiar with the process and then explained: a box would be prepared for them, their order would appear on the website at 9 p.m., and payment would be required then. In another LIVE, a newcomer asked in the chat, ‘I am new, what should I do?’, and the streamer explained that second-hand baby clothes are reserved during the LIVE and must be paid for on the website within 24 hours. These instructions suggest an ease through which purchasing works and indicate how streamers establish their own rules within the bounded space of the LIVE, ranging from when payments must be made to how the consumer makes the payment. Often, streamers placed a time limit on completing the transaction, adding another temporal dimension to the quick-paced selling in the live auction itself. It also functions as a risk mitigation strategy for the streamer who is reliant upon the consumer completing the transaction after the auction: although viewers express their commitment in the auction, the streamer has limited means to follow up on payments, and in cases with more interested viewers than selected claimants, this could mean loss of income.

Information about how shopping works was not only articulated by the streamer. In one example, a user in a chat explains how to claim items and use the second-hand selling platform, Vinted, to make the payment to ensure the lowest fees are incurred. Later in this livestream, when the newcomer makes their first claim, some of this information is reaffirmed by the streamer, who also asks them to connect via Instagram. The Instagram account is supplied by a user in the chat. What is left unexplained but implied is that Instagram functions as the communication channel for payment coordination. This example speaks to the assemblage of platforms and apps used by streamers to facilitate shopping in the absence of the TikTok Shop infrastructure and attempts to manage the transactional journey across this ecosystem through establishing communication channels. The use of Instagram and Vinted also means that consumers are required to operate accounts (and thereby enter a contract with additional platform companies) to engage in shopping.

Finally, in this format, the focus is on the act of claiming, staged through the words and actions of the streamer as well as user comments. What remains hidden is the labour of tracking and processing sales. Claimed items may be moved out of frame, stacked in piles or noted in a notebook, with only glimpses available to viewers. This indicates how attention is directed towards the first stage of the consumer journey, fostering a sense of excitement, anticipation and interaction centred on the act of claiming.

Directing users towards web sales through TikTok LIVE

The second shopping format we identify is streamers directing viewers to their websites to purchase items promoted on the livestream. As such, LIVE functions as a space for showcasing goods. Streamers respond to requests to show or try on products, such as clothing, beauty items or accessories, and discuss size, fit, material and application of items, remediating in-store customer service dynamics in the digital, real-time format. Celebrations of purchasing in the moment cultivate a shopping environment. By ensuring notification sounds, signalling a new order has been received, can be heard during the livestream, shopping as an act is made present. Purchases, therefore, interrupt the flow of the stream, particularly when the streamer reacts, typically signing ‘sale’. This potentially incentivises viewers to make a purchase during the LIVE and, therefore, make an intervention in the livestream.

While viewers are limited to typing in chat, streamers seek out questions from viewers. Such a push towards engagement reveals a belief that interactions between the streamer and viewers may drive sales, and responsiveness is positioned as critical to self-governance enacted in this space. Viewers also use the chat function to troubleshoot issues, which could be considered a mechanism for holding streamers to account. In observed sessions, viewers often drew attention to challenges in placing or receiving orders as well as delays with delivery, demonstrating how the livestream is understood as a space through which to communicate with sellers. For instance, when a user noted that a discount was not applied, the streamer immediately addressed the issue during the LIVE in real time. Quick responses may not only help users feel informed but also contribute to the immediacy of consumption, bringing the overt orientation towards consumerism into the synchronous possibilities of the live experience. These types of interactions become evidence that promotion through LIVEs translates into purchases, potentially contributing to overcoming frictions that arise in the transactional phases.

Like the claiming via chat method, exclusivity also plays a role in this form of shopping. Streamers preview new items ahead of their arrival online, promote stocks that will become available again and share discount codes, rewarding users with ‘insider’ advantages. For example, fragrances sold by one streamer lacked descriptions on their website. It was through participation in the LIVE that viewers could learn about the codes for scents on websites that were for ‘Miss Dior’, for example. As such, the streamer leverages the ephemerality of the medium to avoid potential infringements related to the originality of the items if they were listed online. Consumers are, thus, rewarded for engaging with the ad hoc provision of infrastructure to shop, but this self-governance arrangement also renders some digital traces within the transaction journey fleeting and inaccessible after or outside of the livestream. In another instance, viewers watched a streamer create an artificial flower arrangement during the livestream, which was then added to the brand's website under the TikTok LIVE section. The name given to this product was suggested by a user in the chat. It may hold additional value given the input users offered during the process of what it should look like. For the streamer, the behind-the-scenes process becomes part of what is sold, offering access to authenticity.

Hosting giveaways on TikTok LIVE

Another approach observed is the use of LIVEs to hold giveaways, requiring the attention and presence of users in the LIVE to participate. Entry is often linked to purchases, either through claims or website orders, although tickets could be bought for participation in some cases. Consequently, this was not a standalone format. Instead, the account would hold live auctions or direct users towards their websites and then use giveaways as a way to reward shopping as well as cultivate entertainment and enjoyment in the livestream.

The regulation of the giveaway process by streamers was often made highly visible to viewers. As part of promoting the upcoming giveaway, streamers outlined key rules they had established. In one livestream, the two streamers consistently reminded viewers that reaching 100,000 likes would trigger a giveaway. By showing viewers post-it notes with names of buyers as proof of inclusion, they pre-empted concerns about scams and cultivated anticipation. Similarly, in another fashion livestream, when users asked about previous winners, the streamer verbally confirmed names to provide reassurance that the giveaway was held and inspire credibility for their account.

Streamers tended to host giveaways in dedicated livestreams where this was the sole focus. Within this LIVE, interaction between streamers and viewers was fundamental to how many giveaways were facilitated. For example, in giveaways for a beauty brand observed across multiple days, the following process was followed by the streamer: (a) establishing the collective goal for viewers (a target number of likes) across two TikTok accounts and one Instagram account streaming simultaneously, (b) tracking progress to meeting the target to build excitement for when the giveaway occurs, (c) providing a countdown for viewers to post their order numbers in the chat, (d) random selection of a participant, (e) checking their order number and confirming eligibility, (f) spinning a prize wheel and (g) requiring the selected winner to respond in the chat to choose their reward (every option on prize wheel involved additional choice). For instance, if they won a lip starter kit, they picked the version they wanted. These different points of interaction cultivate a participatory environment in the LIVE while ensuring the streamer maintains control over the process, downplaying potential ambiguity, such as how the winner is selected, or discretion in rulemaking, such as why the engagement metric of likes is required.

Alongside LIVEs in which selected consumers receive a prize, we also observed promotions involving gifts. In this case, many consumers, rather than a selected one or few, received a gift after fulfilling some conditions of purchase. For example, all consumers spending over 30 euros received a gift bag as part of the Black Friday promotional period for one of the fashion livestreams. The gift is awarded during the LIVE, incentivising the purchaser to join. When a name was announced, the purchaser commented a number that corresponded to a bag in the studio, which the streamer then revealed to the audience, sparking discussion in the chat. This speaks to how the potential of receiving payment in the form of a gift (i.e. monetisation) for viewers is part of how streamers govern livestreams, which, in turn, are conceived of as space in which streamers can generate sales (and, thus, monetise) from their audience.

Performance of roles during LIVE

Our analysis of the three shopping formats indicates how interactions between users facilitate the purchasing and selling of consumer goods, governed by explicitly articulated rules established by streamers and the co-construction of norms with viewers. Turning to the roles performed during livestreams, we look at how streamers engage in different modes of self-presentation, which are resonant with influencer practices and critical for how streamers seek to comply with platform policy about redirecting. We also consider how viewers help manage the LIVE experience, facilitating interaction and supporting the purchasing process.

Streamers as performers

Some streamers resemble charismatic influencers by fostering community bonds and emulating the self-branding practices of influencers. One streamer weaves their promotion of personalised phone cases, wallets and other accessories, and reminders about their Black Friday promotion, with non-sale-related interaction. A cultivation of belonging among the audience is evident in the deliberate attention placed on tracking comments and recognising viewers referring to the audience as ‘a whole community’. As a viewer comments they recently got a cat, the streamer directs follow-up questions to this individual, opens the conversation to other viewers and discloses she is part of the ‘cat family’. In another livestream selling household décor, the streamer also engaged in everyday, conversational talk and personal storytelling. This included sharing his feelings about winter as a season and reflecting on his choice to invest in business rather than a house. By discussing topics other than selling, some streamers inject personal disclosure and social interaction with the commercial orientation of the LIVE, developing communicative intimacies (Abidin, 2015) that fuse monetisation with parasociality. That is, routine selling-related activities, such as packing orders and promoting products, are the catalyst for sociality, an inverse of influencers, wherein parasocial relationships and authentic performances enable monetisation of content. The familiarity between some streamers and viewers indicates the emergence of interaction beyond one-off participation, which may manifest in sales. In both examples, the streamers were also the brand owners – suggesting that cultivating a personal self-brand may strengthen connection to their business. The investment in non-sales disclosures may stem from their financial stake in the LIVE, compared with streamers who seem to be employees of the brand.

Irrespective of ownership, however, there is an upbeat, positive affective tone of streamers and friendliness as streamers interact with viewers. Even among streamers who were more transaction-focused, concentrating on selling and managing the purchasing experience, often in LIVEs using the claiming method, or focused on behind-the-scenes labour, they perform for viewers. For example, mundane tasks such as assembling and labelling orders are narrated, providing a backdrop for engagement. In this case, each order is framed as a performance of authenticity and reliability: buyers were asked if they were watching, reinforcing the value of seeing their items made in real time and blurring the line between product and service. Livestreaming relies upon self-surveillance by the streamer, wherein they must be on and perform for the audience, bringing publicity to work through its mediation. Most streamers are young women who maintain an upbeat tone, smiling as they interact and pack. Thus, emotional labour in displaying these right feelings (Hochschild, 1983) emerges as an established practice, governing how streamers perform.

Another specific type of performance by streamers takes place in the ‘rip and ship’ model. This is common for the sale of Pokémon cards, where the unveiling of the purchased packs happens during the livestream. After the streamer confirms the presence of each buyer, they are offered a choice of what pack to select, emulating the interactivity employed in the giveaway model. The streamer then ‘rips’ open the pack; the randomness of card allocation adds suspense and entertainment to the act, making the purchase not only about the goods but also about the experience of their unveiling, arguably turning it into a service. The discussion of what specific cards have been discovered and the excitement when they are novel is consistently performed by the streamer. While unboxing is an established content genre, who the purchase is for is inverted in the livestream as well as the temporality wherein the streamer, buyer and viewers are co-present in the livestream.

Viewers as endorsers

Viewers also assume leadership roles, both formally and informally, to support shopping in livestreams. Assigned moderators, for instance, use the pin function not only to highlight successful claims but also to provide key information for newcomers. At times, streamers ask during the livestream for users to help with answering questions from the chat and letting others know about special promotions when they might be occupied packing orders. In one LIVE, a viewer requests in the chat to be made a moderator to assist with managing comments, indicating the expectation that the labour of managing the shopping experience will be shared. As such, these selected viewers become critical to how auctions are facilitated by upholding the rules of interaction, as governors, alongside the streamer.

Some viewers act as unofficial brand ambassadors for the accounts, endorsing not only the use of livestreams for shopping but the specific consumer experience with the brand. Users would share positive feedback about their purchases in the chat. Such endorsements function like online reviews, cultivating trust within the LIVE community about the integrity of the store and the quality of items. They demonstrate how the live infrastructure is repurposed to facilitate anticipated aspects of the shopping experience, but in this instance, this feedback is constrained by the ephemerality and visibility of the pace of the chat. While streamers did not ask for positive reviews, most would acknowledge these comments and thank consumers by username. In doing so, known consumers were marked as in-group members, gaining visibility in this space, and streamers could co-construct an expectation of such disclosure.

Some users also engaged as active supporters through liking and sharing the stream, following the account and sending virtual gifts. Some streamers echoed YouTube's ‘like and subscribe’ calls, bringing engagement metrics into the culture of live shopping. While, as previously noted, this was part of giveaways, the need to boost visibility and popularity to gain access to more viewers, and thus consumers, through platform affordances was also present in live auctions and web sale formats. By thanking users when these actions were taken, streamers reward the ‘right’ behaviour with public recognition, which exists alongside the visibility of this in the chat. Although not widespread in our dataset, we observed four instances in which virtual gifting occurred. Facilitated through TikTok's gifting feature, virtual gifts appear as emojis, eliciting attention from the streamer and, depending on how many are received, would be converted into payment. In one livestream, the streamer makes use of ‘LIVE goal’, pausing the live auction to set the target of 100 roses. She discusses how the goals needed to be high enough to avoid frequent resets and emphasises wanting to stay ‘humble’, performing the ‘right’ feeling. As the roses are rapidly sent, highly visible on the interface, the streamer celebrates, exclaiming, ‘It's a party today, ladies, and we are happy’. This expression of gratitude and enthusiastic, emotionally appropriate responses exemplify the careful management of the self as streamer. When streamers employed two forms of monetisation (direct selling and virtual gifting) two forms of monetisation, we observed such regulation of the self to avoid being perceived as too commercially driven or greedy.

Governance reflections

The platformisation of shopping as a sociotechnical phenomenon on TikTok LIVE is enabled by a governance arrangement. While our analysis so far has concerned the self-governance of shopping formats and performances that streamers and some users co-construct and enforce implicitly and explicitly, these rules, norms and practices exist within the governance of and by platforms. In addressing live shopping as a participatory spectacle in the Netherlands, we draw attention to how commerce unfolds on social media platforms in ways that are not directly facilitated through formal platform infrastructures, such as TikTok Shop. Instead, they are created and sustained by both the self-governance efforts of users themselves as well as the technical affordances of LIVE and the discretionary authority the platform has over users.

On the side of governance by platforms, the affordances of TikTok embed commercial logics into live interaction. The display of comments through an updating chat, visibility of engagement metrics, the function to pin comments and monetisation products of gifting and goal setting are not neutral tools of communication: they channel user behaviour towards monetisation and engagement. For instance, when a streamer pauses a claiming ritual to set a gifting goal, the rhythm of the stream is shifted in the sense that attention moves away from the product and towards the gamified pursuit of digital gifts. These tools structure the tempo, rhythm and structure of live shopping as a participatory spectacle – transforming the act of purchasing into a performance. According to Community Guidelines in 2024, ‘when the main purpose of the LIVE is redirecting people to go off-platform’, the LIVE would be ineligible for recommendation through the For You page, and repeated ineligibility could lead to restrictions. While we observe all three shopping formats rely on consumers paying for transactions outside of TikTok, the practices of engagement, personal storytelling showcasing items and packing orders exemplify deliberate efforts to ensure compliance with platform regulation. This is because TikTok exercises discretionary authority through its capacity to mute users, suspend accounts or terminate streams (Aade, 2025b). These enforcement powers are often faster and more decisive than those of public regulators. In effect, TikTok governs commerce on its platform not only by setting technical conditions but also by policing them through private rules and opaque decision-making. This resembles what Gillespie (2018) has called the role of platforms as ‘custodians’: they enforce standards of behaviour that profoundly shape markets and do so without public accountability.

On the side of the governance of platforms, existing consumer protection law applies in principle but proves difficult to operationalise in practice. On traditional e-commerce platforms, such as Amazon or eBay, pre-contractual information required by the CRD can easily be displayed on stable web pages, usually referred to as a ‘durable medium’, and verified by enforcement authorities. 75 of the 80 accounts in our dataset had a website, with 72 providing contact details and 44 including their Chamber of Commerce number, indicating awareness of transparency requirements. Critically, this is largely absent on TikTok (only four include contact details in their bio, and one includes a chamber of commerce number) and during the livestream in which consumers encounter the commercial activity. Furthermore, in livestream shopping, however, the provision of information on the product being sold is fragmented across fleeting moments of interaction or announced only after the purchase has already been made. A streamer might reveal the price orally just as the claiming ritual begins or mention withdrawal rights in passing (only in seven observed sessions), but such disclosures are difficult to monitor or verify unless the stream is recorded. Compliance, therefore, becomes not only a matter of substance, but also a form, raising the question of how consumer protection rules premised on stable, textual disclosure can be enforced in fast-moving and ephemeral environments. The proceduralisation of shopping, entailed by duties such as the existence of the pre-contractual information, becomes incompatible with shoppertainment as enacted in TikTok livestreams in the Dutch context.

Additionally, live shopping environments are prone to misleading and aggressive commercial practices, prohibited under the UCPD, in the sense that streamers may employ tactics, such as undue influence, to pressure viewers into making purchases (Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers, 2024). In livestream shopping, the relationship between the streamer and audience often carries elements of trust, familiarity and even intimacy, which can be leveraged to encourage purchases, as shown in the analysis. More strikingly, the format itself creates pressure that resembles undue influence. Rapid claiming rituals, scarcity cues, time-limited promotion and the performative energy of the stream all aim to accelerate decision-making. Put differently, consumers are pushed into immediate purchases with little opportunity for reflection. In some cases, live shopping could also resemble harassment, for instance, when viewers are repeatedly prompted to claim or when the streamer pestered them to buy before the stock runs out.

The legal assessment of TikTok remains a grey area because it does not provide the tools for the facilitation and conclusion of commercial transactions. Yet we argue that the role of TikTok cannot be reduced to that of a passive intermediary. By qualifying as a VLOP, a very large online platform (European Commission, 2023) under the Digital Services Act, TikTok is required to identify, analyse and assess any systemic risks, including those related to consumer protection (Goanta et al., 2024). This means that even if TikTok does not process payments or host transactions for LIVE Shopping, it may still bear responsibility for the risks created by how its LIVE features are used for commerce. Practices such as redirecting users to Instagram or Vinted for payment or embedding purchasing into ephemeral rituals like claiming or giveaways are not neutral: they are made possible by the affordances of TikTok and therefore fall within its systemic risk environment. In this sense, TikTok occupies an ambiguous legal position. On the one hand, it can be argued that it is not an online marketplace in the traditional sense and therefore, not directly subject to CRD and UCPD obligations designed for that category. On the other hand, it cannot fully avoid responsibility: the design choices and governance practices of TikTok LIVEs shape how commerce unfolds on the platform and expose consumers to risks.

Conclusion

Live shopping challenges the conventional narrative put forward that social media platforms are a ‘public square’ and exemplifies the new social media era (Goanta, 2022), in which e-commerce is firmly integrated into content distribution and social networking. The premise of social commerce features like TikTok Shop is that users can remain on the same platform where they produce and scroll content to purchase goods that are being promoted. This convergence of social media with online marketplaces, therefore, challenges existing understanding of the platformisation of consumer culture (Caliandro et al., 2024b).

In this article, we have examined the phenomenon of live shopping in the Netherlands, demonstrating how it can be operationalised even when TikTok Shop is unavailable, through streamers and viewers leveraging livestreaming affordances and developing practices to construct shopping as a participatory spectacle. Like other forms of livestreaming, live shopping depends on interactions between streamers and viewers. In this instance, it is through real-time synchronous communication and visibility of users (Cunningham and Craig, 2019; Meisner and Ledbetter, 2022; Taylor, 2018; Zhao et al., 2023) that viewers compete to buy, see and ask questions about products, and are rewarded for their purchases. Therefore, exclusivity contributes to the experience of TikTok LIVEs as a time and space for shopping, with access to not only the products themselves but also the mechanisms for making purchases, which are only available through viewers’ co-presence with streamers. As we have identified, the role that livestreams play in facilitating shopping can be classified into three formats: live auctions, external sales and community-driven giveaways.

We have extended the concept of shoppability (Hund and McGuigan, 2019) to argue that the promotion of consumption and the ability to shop on social media platforms rely on staging this commercial activity as a participatory spectacle. Streamers deploy strategies and techniques to retain the attention of viewers, playing with temporality and pace (Coleman, 2018), as they entangle the commercial, social and personal aspects, encouraging users to make purchases. While we have analysed how streamers utilise engagement, authenticity and connectivity practices developed by creators (Abidin, 2016; Duffy, 2017; Hund, 2023; Hund and McGuigan, 2019), these performances are always connected to the commercial imperative. Casual interaction and self-disclosure are dispersed into the selling, which is positioned as the purpose of the livestream. The transaction-focused and customer service interactions, the use of behind-the-scenes labour, the involvement in selling as content and the celebration of purchasing ensure that shopping is centre-stage. However, across the range of accounts observed, there is consistency in streamers expressing the ‘right’ feelings, attitudes and access to the self. While part of fostering a sense of community amongst viewers and ensuring shoppability is not only anchored in commercial activity, it has implications for streamers’ working conditions. This is an area future research could explore, and it relates to the lack of support and infrastructure from TikTok.

Our adoption of a governance perspective shows how live shopping challenges existing consumer protection laws. The informality of social commerce (Aade, 2025b) in the Dutch context lets TikTok sidestep responsibility for live shopping. TikTok benefits from user expectations that shopping can happen even without TikTok Shop. As a result, streamers govern livestream shoppability, setting and enforcing their own interaction rules, sometimes also in collaboration with viewers and moderators. Yet, consumer law still applies, despite the casual and fun staging of commercial activity. We question whether streamers can meet legal requirements across the assemblage of platforms used for selling and buying in our case study. We also question how their selling tactics are monitored for compliance and note the lack of protections for streamers by the platform. One streamer proudly reported that 200 orders were received overnight, which may be thanks to the heightened shopping period of Black Friday, but speaks to the uptake of this type of shopping. Critical exploration of what is happening in these commercially motivated livestreams, we propose, is vital to understand the particularities of practices and broader issues of governance of monetisation as it unfolds on platforms.

In this study, we focused only on Dutch streamers and used TikTok's algorithmic recommendations to select livestreams. Our sample mainly included consumer goods from the fashion, beauty and lifestyle markets. Future research could explore other cultural contexts and markets to see if the practices and formats we described are typical of live shopping or unique to these communities. These performances and roles may also change when users have access to TikTok Shop, offering more insight into the conditions of shoppability. It is also important to understand how other social media platforms with livestreaming features serve as shopping sites. While Meta integrated e-commerce through checkout tools on Facebook and Instagram, and YouTube has partnered with e-commerce platforms, it remains unclear how different platform cultures shape shoppability.

This research agenda, we consider, as necessary to push back against platforms such as TikTok that develop public narratives that maintain their neutrality as a speech intermediary, but they continue to evade scrutiny and compliance for their e-commerce activities. E-commerce on social media becomes a social, emotional experience, which raises concerns about the fitness of existing legal frameworks for the potential economic harm that may derive from how parasocial relations encourage monetisation. This also requires us to rethink the types of harms that might arise in these privately governed spaces, ranging from concerns about freedom of expression to consumer protection issues. While our analysis of how buying and selling are brought into livestreaming focuses on practices, performances and interactions, we nevertheless observe the potential for consumer harms to arise. These include how streamers promote and present items, which may be misleading and manipulate parasociality, the pre-contractual information, such as information about the business and withdrawal rights that the consumer can access, as well as safety concerns related to products themselves. One of the core issues at stake with the arrival of live shopping and integration of e-commerce on social media is what fairness in governance looks like. While EU consumer law has evolved with the arrival of platforms like Amazon and eBay as intermediaries and marketplaces, consumer protection frameworks do not recognise the development of shoppability in platform society.