Pricing Decisions in Live Streaming E-Commerce Supply Chains Under the Scarcity Effect

Abstract

Despite being a prevalent scarcity marketing strategy in live streaming e-commerce, limited-release sales still lack rigorous theoretical elucidation regarding their underlying supply chain coordination and pricing mechanisms. This paper constructs a three-echelon supply chain game model comprising a brand, a live streamer (either an in-house employee or an external influencer), and a live streaming platform to systematically analyze the impacts of scarcity strategies (supply ratio control) and traffic empowerment on operation mode selection. We identify three channel structures: the pure in-house streaming model (Model R), the pure influencer streaming model (Model A), and the dual-channel streaming model (Model D). Our findings reveal that the scarcity strategy affects the equilibrium through a dual pathway of "willingness-to-pay amplification" and "physical supply restriction." The centralization of pricing power with the influencer streamer mitigates coordination failure but exacerbates double marginalization, prompting the brand to implement aggressive supply rationing as a hedging mechanism. When dual channels coexist, a subtle trade-off emerges between the inter-channel demand spillover effect and the self-cannibalization effect, leading to pricing suppression and asymmetric scarcity allocation. Furthermore, platform traffic allocation exhibits a strong scarcity preference, creating a positive feedback loop with brand supply restrictions. The theoretical analysis provides a systematic decision-making framework for understanding operation mode selection in live streaming e-commerce.