Why Foreign Influencers Win Over Chinese Shoppers: New Study Reveals the Psychology Behind Cross-Cultural Live-Stream Sales

Foreign influencers have become a familiar and commercially powerful presence on Chinese social media and e-commerce platforms, selling everything from cosmetics to agricultural products in real-time live streams. Yet a fundamental question has remained unanswered: do Chinese consumers actually respond to these foreign communicators’ ability to bridge cultural divides, and if so, how does that response translate into a willingness to buy? A new study published in Frontiers in Communication on 15 October 2026 offers one of the first quantitative answers, and its findings reveal that not all forms of cross-cultural skill are created equal in the eyes of shoppers.

The research, conducted by Qingqing Liu, Kavitha Balakrishnan, and Mokhtarrudin Bin Ahmad of the Faculty of Applied Communication at Multimedia University in Malaysia, draws on survey data from 450 eligible consumers in Zhejiang Province, China. The team analysed the data using partial least squares structural equation modelling, a statistical technique well suited to testing how multiple psychological constructs relate to one another simultaneously. Their central innovation was to split the broad concept of cross-cultural competency into two distinct dimensions and trace how each one connects to purchase intention through the established machinery of the Theory of Planned Behavior.

The Theory of Planned Behavior, first formulated by Icek Ajzen, holds that a person’s intention to perform a behavior is shaped by three psychological factors: attitude, meaning the individual’s favourable or unfavourable evaluation of the behavior; subjective norm, meaning the perceived social pressure or approval of relevant others; and perceived behavioral control, meaning the individual’s sense that they have the ability and resources to carry out the behavior. The theory has been applied extensively to consumer and online purchasing contexts, but its conventional formulation focuses on consumer-side psychology and does not explicitly account for culturally relevant characteristics of the communicators doing the selling. The new study extends the theory by positioning consumers’ perceptions of foreign influencers’ cross-cultural skills as antecedents that feed into the three established psychological pathways.

The two dimensions the researchers distinguished are intercultural communication competency, abbreviated ICC, and intercultural adaptability, abbreviated ICA. ICC refers to an individual’s ability to understand culturally situated meanings and communicate both effectively and appropriately across cultural boundaries, encompassing cognitive, affective, and behavioural elements. ICA, by contrast, concerns emotional and behavioural adjustment to an unfamiliar cultural environment, including emotional resilience, flexibility and openness, perceptual acuity, and personal autonomy. The distinction matters because live-streaming commerce makes both capacities directly observable: viewers can watch how a foreign influencer explains culturally specific content, deals with misunderstandings, adjusts their communication when needed, and responds to local expectations in real time.

To measure these perceptions, the researchers adapted two established self-report instruments, the Intercultural Communication Competence Scale and the Cross-Cultural Adaptability Inventory, so that respondents evaluated the foreign influencers they had watched rather than themselves. The ICC scale covered cognitive, affective, and behavioural competency facets, while the ICA inventory covered emotional resilience, flexibility and openness, perceptual acuity, and personal autonomy. Because the combined instruments contained 60 items, the researchers aggregated them into theory-defined facet parcels, preserving the original content structure while reducing measurement complexity. All items were measured on five-point Likert scales, and the questionnaire was translated into Chinese, checked through back-translation, reviewed by two experts, and piloted with 120 eligible respondents before the main survey.

The results revealed a striking asymmetry between the two dimensions. Intercultural communication competency was positively associated with purchase intention both directly and indirectly through all three Theory of Planned Behavior constructs. The direct path from ICC to purchase intention was statistically significant, and ICC also showed significant positive relationships with attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control. Intercultural adaptability, however, told a different story: it had no significant direct association with purchase intention, yet it showed significant specific indirect associations through attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control. In other words, adaptability appears to work at an earlier stage of the decision process, shaping how consumers evaluate the live-streaming experience, perceive social acceptance, and feel in control of the purchase, rather than serving as a direct reason to buy.

The mediation analysis further differentiated the two dimensions. For ICC, the strongest indirect pathway to purchase intention ran through attitude, followed by perceived behavioral control and then subjective norm. This pattern suggests that clear, culturally appropriate communication leads consumers to view the live-streaming experience more favourably, which in turn strengthens their intention to buy. For ICA, the strongest indirect pathway ran through subjective norm, followed by attitude and perceived behavioral control. The researchers interpret this as reflecting the social implications of cultural adaptation: when a foreign influencer demonstrates awareness of and respect for local norms, consumers may be more likely to regard engagement with that influencer, and purchasing the promoted products, as socially and culturally acceptable. The combined indirect effect of ICA through the three mediators was positive and significant, and the total effect of ICA on purchase intention was also significant, indicating that adaptability is far from unimportant even though its direct path was not.

The three core Theory of Planned Behavior relationships also remained intact. Attitude showed the strongest relationship with purchase intention, followed by subjective norm and perceived behavioral control, confirming that the established evaluative, normative, and control-related structure of the theory remains applicable in foreign-influencer live-streaming commerce. The model explained 43.5 per cent of the variance in purchase intention, a moderate level of explanatory power, while the variance explained in attitude and subjective norm was more modest, reflecting the deliberately narrow set of antecedents included. The researchers note that other factors, such as product quality, price, influencer credibility, trust, and previous shopping experience, would also shape attitudes and norms but were outside the scope of this focused model.

The practical implications are considerable for brands, platforms, and the growing cohort of foreign content creators working in China’s live-streaming economy. The findings suggest that communication strategies should prioritise how viewers experience and evaluate the live stream, since attitude carried the largest indirect relationship between communication competency and purchase intention. Adaptation strategies, meanwhile, should attend to local norms and social expectations, since subjective norm carried the largest indirect relationship for adaptability. The researchers also caution that adaptation does not mean copying domestic influencers; foreign creators can respond to the local cultural setting while retaining an identifiable personal style, and localisation that appears forced or superficial may not produce the intended response. Brands and platforms can additionally use perceived cross-cultural competency as a selection criterion, since follower numbers and sales figures do not reveal how well an influencer communicates with Chinese audiences or responds to cultural differences.

The researchers are careful to specify the boundaries of their findings. The data are cross-sectional and were obtained from a convenience sample of topic-interested consumers in Zhejiang Province, a region with a well-developed platform economy and mature cross-border trade environment. The findings therefore represent conditional associations within this specific sample and should not be generalised to all Chinese consumers. Because purchase intention was measured rather than actual purchasing behaviour, the transition from intention to behaviour could be influenced by price, product availability, logistics, payment conditions, trust, and promotional incentives. Future research, the team suggests, should employ longitudinal designs, experimental manipulations of communication and adaptive behaviours, and platform-generated behavioural data such as click-throughs and completed purchases to establish whether the observed associations hold beyond self-reported intentions. Nevertheless, by separating communication competency from cultural adaptability, the study provides a more precise account of how culturally relevant perceptions of foreign communicators enter consumer decision-making, and it demonstrates how the Theory of Planned Behavior can be extended to cross-cultural live-streaming settings without altering its established psychological structure.

Subject of Research: Consumer psychology

Article Title: Perceived cross-cultural competency and purchase intention in foreign-influencer live streaming commerce: an extended theory of planned behavior perspective

Article References: Liu, Q., Balakrishnan, K., & Ahmad, M. B. (2026). Perceived cross-cultural competency and purchase intention in foreign-influencer live streaming commerce: an extended theory of planned behavior perspective. Frontiers in Communication, 11, Article 1978630. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2026.1978630

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2026.1978630

Keywords: live streaming commerce, theory of planned behavior, intercultural communication, influencer marketing, purchase intention, cross-cultural psychology, China, consumer behavior, Perceived, cross-cultural, competency, purchase