As a business innovation in the e-commerce marketplace, the use of live streams to boost sales has become an important strategy for e-tailers on major e-commerce platforms globally. However, little theoretical research has been conducted to understand the role of streamers and products in live streaming commerce. Thus, in this study, to examine consumers' perceived diagnosticity and purchase intention, we adopt a 2 (streamer type) × 2 (product type) × 2 (brand awareness) experimental design and conduct a field experiment at a university in southern China, drawing on stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory. Our results indicate that when a product is recommended by an influential streamer during an e-commerce live stream or has high brand awareness, consumers perceive a high level of diagnosticity, which improves their purchase intention. However, we find no significant effect of product type on the perceived diagnosticity of viewers watching e-commerce live streams. We also discuss the implications of our findings for both theory and practice. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10799-022-00375-7.

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