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1. Introduction
Today, live commerce has been booming. In 2020, China's e-commerce live commerce market, as a typical mode of live commerce, reached 961 billion yuan. Viya, the largest anchor in China, had two-hour live commerce with sales exceeding 267 million yuan [1]. Austin Li, the most popular and famous anchor, closed 1.03 million deals worth 200 million yuan in a four-hour live streaming show viewed by 22.95 million people on June 8, 2020 [2].
Live commerce refers to a new type of selling mode in which an anchor vividly and interactively displays products online, offers consults, answers questions, guides sales through some Internet platforms by live streaming (Hilvert-Bruce et al., 2018), and finally ells products to consumers. Mogujie and Taobao first launched live streaming e-commerce in 2016, indicating the start of live commerce. Due to the popularity of anchors, some manufacturers cooperate with anchors and have developed the live commerce supply chain, which has been pushing the boom in live commerce. For example, on November 24, 2020, Austin Li achieved 112-million-yuan sales through live commerce, which accounts for nearly 2/3 of Florasis total sales (185 million yuan) [3].
The live commerce supply chain is quite different from the traditional supply chain. In the traditional supply chain, manufacturers sell their products directly or through retailers. In the live commerce supply chain, manufacturers sell their products directly or by live commerce of anchors who are members of this supply chain. The anchor needs to determine the sales price of products, which depends on the level of the anchor's live streaming service. Therefore, how to optimize decisions of live commerce supply chain to maximize its profit is a need for research to enhance our understanding of this supply chain.
More importantly, the live commerce supply chain generates two effects, the live commerce effect and the live commerce spillover effect. During live commerce, the anchor with live streaming, displays, demonstrates and realizes a real-time interaction with consumers and sells the products to them. Her efforts have facilitated consumer's learning of information about whether the products match their taste. The consumer inspects and buys the products through live commerce of anchors. Therefore, if anchor's efforts are more or less, the products' return probability of consumers is lower or...