Should start-up firms shift to employee or AI livestreaming? Mode selection after influencer-driven customer acquisition

College of Business Administration, Hunan University of Finance and Economics, Changsha, Hunan, 410006, China With the boom in livestreaming e-commerce, numerous start-up firms heavily rely on inuencer livestreaming to drive customer acquisition, yet high inuencer commission rates threaten their long-term operational sustainability. Addressing this dilemma, this study develops a two-stage game-theoretic model to examine whether start-ups should continue with inuencer livestreaming or switch to self-run livestreaming (employee/AI) post initial inuencer-driven customer acquisition. The research shows that the optimal livestreaming model depends on the commission rate, the network externality from inuencer-driven customer acquisition (customer retention rate), and the AI streamer technology maturity. Counter-intuitively, firms may prefer inuencer livestreaming at a high commission rate, but favor self-run models even at a low commission rate, due to the network externality and the AI streamer technology maturity. Moreover, we derive interesting two-stage pricing strategies for these three livestreaming models: firms in the inuencer livestreaming model consistently employ low-to-high (L-H) pricing, whereas firms in employee and AI models adopt high-to-low (H-L) pricing when the customer retention rate is low. These findings provide actionable guidance for start-ups to optimize livestreaming strategies and pricing decisions.