Livestreaming E-commerce and the spatial reconfiguration of urban retail functions in China: An urban value chain approach

The rise of livestreaming e-commerce (LSE) is reshaping the spatial configuration of urban retail functions, yet its relationship to traditional urban hierarchies remains unclear. Drawing on urban value chain (UVC) theory, this study examines how LSE reconfigures retail functions in China's urban system. Based on data from 289 prefecture-level and above cities covering LSE sales, conventional and luxury retail, light manufacturing, logistics, and MCN agencies, the analysis suggests that LSE activity exhibits significant spatial clustering, with a global Moran's I of 0.272 for LSE and 0.513 for conventional retail, whilst luxury retail shows no significant clustering. This spatial pattern overlaps with but also diverges from traditional urban size hierarchies. Amongst the sixteen Tier I LSE cities, nine fall outside the megacity and very large city categories defined by urban district population, indicating partial decoupling between LSE positioning and conventional size hierarchies. Some medium-sized industrial-belt cities such as Jiaxing hold high LSE positions alongside strong industrial clusters, whilst some traditional core cities such as Chongqing underperform in LSE provision despite substantial population and consumption capacity. Through multidimensional cross-tabulation together with formal statistical and spatial regression analysis, a multidimensional urban retail function hierarchy is constructed, from which three typical UVC configurations of multi-reinforcement, external embedding, and platform upgrading are distinguished as exploratory ideal types. These findings suggest that digital platforms are reshaping the spatial division of labor in urban retail, contributing to an emerging research agenda on the geography of platform-mediated retail and its interaction with established urban hierarchies.