Is Live-Stream Marketing by Officials a Good Idea?

With the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic effectively under control in China, the country’s economic activity is expected to recover soon.

However, many farmers are struggling to offload agricultural products that were hard to sell during the shutdowns that marked the peak of the outbreak. In the hardest-hit Hubei Province in central China, local officials are live-streaming on e-commerce platforms to pitch products on behalf of local farmers, in a bid to convince more people to buy them. So far, it has proved an effective means of advertising.

In Honghu, a city in Hubei, consumers rushed online to order locally grown lotus root after local officials pitched the product during a live-stream. In the city of Yichang, 40,000-kg navel oranges sold in one day thanks to