The New Wave of Live Buying: How Generation X is Revolutionizing Retail through Social Media Live Streaming ?

The usage of social media has raised dramatically not only globally, also in Malaysia. The usage of social media gave the retailer an opportunity to promote and sell their products on social media. The selling becomes more interesting when social media also offer the live streaming function where the retailer can show, present, explain, and interact with the audience during the selling process. These new tools created a new wave for retailers. Most of the research on social media are focusing on Generation Y, as they are the known techno-savvy cohort, this research, on the hand, will zoom into Generation X, to see how promotion deals, broadcaster engagement, peers influence, trending and popularity and word of mouth is going to affect the purchase intention of generation X during the social media live streaming. The questionnaire survey was distributed to 150 respondents through WhatsApp and WeChat. The research findings showed broadcasting engagement and promotion deals are going to affect Generation X’s purchase intention in social media live streaming. Based on the results of the study, recommendations were made to the retailer to give an idea of how they can attract Generation X to purchase during the social media live sessions.