Digital gifting in personal brand communities of live-streaming: fostering viewer–streamer–viewer parasocial relationships

Increasingly popular live-streaming applications, such as 17 Media, offer new mechanisms of social exchange through digital gifting in real time. The present study provides an advanced theoretical framework, which synthesizes parasocial interactions and community-driven gifting based on the concept of the consumer-brand-consumer triad to explore this new phenomenon in live-streaming environments. The study uses a mixed-methods qualitative approach with in-depth interviews and participatory observations. The 47 informants were divided into 11 streamers, 24 viewers, and 12 guardians. All informants expressed their experiences and narrated their stories. The results showed that three refined markers existed in the new mechanisms in personal brand communities of live-streaming, which played important roles in fostering viewer-streamer-viewer parasocial relationships. The implications of the findings for personal branding in live-streaming contexts, sociological theories of community, and digital viewer/consumer behavior are discussed.