In recent years, live broadcast has developed rapidly in China. The purpose of live broadcasts is to obtain network traffic, improve the right to speak, promote brands, and spread knowledge. At the moment when material products are vibrant, live broadcast with goods solves people's choice difficulties and product sales problems. In many fields with goods, agricultural products are special because they cannot speak and need someone to speak for them. Under the background of promoting rural revitalization in an all-round way and accelerating the modernization of agriculture and rural areas in China, many rural online celebrities and new farmers have emerged in related industries, which is of great significance for accelerating the digital transformation of the rural population, the digital transformation of the primary industry, and making digital technology play an influential role, but it also poses new challenges.
Based on the above background, from the perspective of development communication, this paper combined diffusion theory and participatory theory, conducted in-depth interviews and investigations on 22 practitioners of agricultural products live broadcast with goods and made a one-month continuous online observation on nine well-known agricultural products live broadcast rooms. By using the methods of qualitative comparative analysis, grounded theory, and multimodal analysis, this paper analyzed the industrial model, at the same time, analyzed the mechanism, strategy, and effect of related merchants and practitioners with goods. The research tries to answer the following questions: (1) Is there a long-term profit mechanism behind the ideal of e-commerce for everyone and online celebrities for every village? What are the key factors? (2) How to understand the media use behavior of practitioners, what are the strategies in the live broadcast of agricultural products, and what are the differences between the strategies of different subjects? (3) What is the effect of live delivery of agricultural products? How does this type of video stream play a developing role in China?
It is found that the participants in the live broadcast of agricultural products are diverse and complex, and their internal operations are quite different. According to the difference between subject and process, it can be divided into four business models: merchant management, anchor broadcasting, local empowerment, and farm self-management. In terms of mechanism, we collected data through interviews and studied and sorted out four key factors affecting profitability, including anchor ability, operational ability, commodity attributes, and resource utilization, as well as three configurations of agricultural products direct broadcast with goods. Good product quality is the primary disk for continuous live broadcasts for local merchants. If the anchor's ability is strong, it can achieve profitability. For online celebrity anchors, the anchor ability is strong, and the operation ability and resource utilization ability has a significant influence on the profit. For organic farms, live delivery is still in the exploratory stage, and the profit model is unstable, which needs to be strengthened in four key factors.
In terms of strategy, interviews with local merchants, online celebrity anchors, and returning elites show that different subjects have different strategies to participate in the live broadcast of agricultural products, which mainly depends on the purpose of using media, individual cognitive level, and social capital (cooperation mode and social experience). From individual merchants to anchors to returning elites, different subjects’ cognitive and business models make them adopt different marketing strategies when carrying agricultural products live. Specifically, individual merchants regard online delivery as a channel for product value-added and quick realization. Although their individual abilities are limited and their marketing strategies and words are few, they are more willing to further empower themselves, accept new things, and gain new knowledge after making profits. Network anchors are more proficient in business, and they are very professional in marketing speech, investment promotion, and commercial investment strategy, but they regard bringing goods as a profession, and their willingness to improve and develop themselves is not strong. Returning elites and managers regard live broadcasts with goods as a channel for brand promotion and investment attraction and pay more attention to management cost and business philosophy when choosing strategies. At the same time, there is a certain gap between this strategy and rural reality in China.
In terms of effect, through the modal analysis of the words and images of the anchor with agricultural products, it is found that the speech expression and behavior of the anchor with goods are highly Internet-based. In order to give consideration to both economic benefits and entertainment needs, the anchor created an image of enthusiastic, optimistic, hardworking, and tenacious rural workers, showing a state of high pay and low demand. The live broadcast scene highlights characteristic rural symbols, mostly for the display of "private areas," such as living rooms, small yards, kitchens, and so on. The live broadcast content focuses on agricultural production, family fun, and life experience, showing the social, and interpersonal relationship of the anchor, which is conducive to creating a relaxed and happy communication atmosphere. The live broadcast discourse is more life-oriented, and an intimate and immersive dialogue space is built through simple and grounded communication.
To sum up, the study analyzes the mechanism, strategy, and effect of agricultural products live broadcast with goods and has the following contributions: First, it enriches the case study of the development of communication science in China, analyzes and considers the differences between cases, and better explains the reasons and motivation of using the media for development, which provides a clear research path for the development of communication science in China in the future. Secondly, it provides an empirical basis and practical reference for new farmers to use live broadcasts for self-development and also provides path support for rural live broadcast e-commerce entrepreneurship. Thirdly, by analyzing the relationship between merchants and platforms, the research provides countermeasures and suggestions for the development of rural e-commerce. By establishing digital supply and marketing cooperatives, we can improve the management concept of agricultural products and brand building and improve the comprehensive added value of products so as to realize the rapid development of rural areas.