Currently, livestream e-commerce is becoming increasingly mainstream in digital retail, with bullet comments serving as a primary communication channel between sellers and consumers, characterized by interactivity, immediacy, entertainment, and usefulness. This research employs a stimulus-organism-response (SOR) framework to empirically examine the differential impacts of informational versus social bullet comments on consumers' purchase intentions in livestream shopping environments, exploring underlying mechanisms and moderating effects. Using scenario-based experiments and questionnaire surveys, this study examined: (1) the differential impacts of informational and social bullet comments on consumers' purchase intentions; (2) the mediating role of consumer trust; and (3) the moderating role of product types (utilitarian vs. hedonic) on the relationship between bullet comment types and consumer trust. The results indicate that informational bullet comments have a stronger positive influence on consumers' purchase intention through increased consumer trust compared to social bullet comments. Moreover, consumer trust induced by informational bullet comments is significantly higher for utilitarian products, whereas consumer trust derived from social bullet comments is notably higher for hedonic products. This study proposes that sellers and hosts in e-commerce livestreaming contexts should strategically enhance real-time comment interactions with users and personalize comment strategies according to product attributes, thereby improving audience engagement and optimizing promotional outcomes.

Bullet Comments, Consumer Trust, Consumers' Purchase Intentions, Product Types, Livestream E-commerce