Creators as shops

Cover of Creators as shops, Frontier Report No. 13

Frontier Report No. 13 · 21 pages · 24 sources

Why do people buy from influencers?

People trust influencers who seem credible and similar to them, and in experiments they identified with and trusted influencers more than celebrities. Engagement peaks with mid sized creators rather than the largest, and in one study retailers that adopted live streaming saw sales rise by more than 40 per cent on average.

What the report found

  1. The creator is the shop window. Goldman Sachs estimated the creator economy at about 250 billion dollars in 2023 and projected it could approach 480 billion by 2027. In China, live stream selling was put at 1.7 trillion yuan in 2023.
  2. Followers trust people like them. In experiments, people identified more with influencers than with celebrities, saw them as more similar and trusted them more, and that trust made the advertising more effective.
  3. Bigger is not always better. In data from more than 1,700 influencers, engagement rose with follower count and then fell: mid sized creators drew the most interaction.
  4. Live selling moves stock. In one study of more than 10,000 products, retailers that adopted live streaming saw sales rise by more than 40 per cent on average.
  5. The Gulf has set clear rules. The UAE issued more than 1,800 advertiser permits within weeks of launching them in 2025, and Saudi Arabia has required a paid licence since 2022.

What is inside

  1. What is new
  2. What older research tells us
  3. What early studies suggest
  4. What nobody knows yet
  5. Questions worth watching

Plus an evidence maturity map, a scenario grid and a list of signals to watch.

Who it is for

For marketers, retailers, creators, platform teams and anyone whose customers now buy from people they follow.

How we work

Frontier Reports separate what is established from what is emerging and what remains untested. Every claim is graded, and where researchers disagree, as they do on whether selling builds or spends a creator's trust, both sides are set out before we say where we stand.

Cite this report

The Why We Project (2026) Creators as shops: Influencer selling and live shopping. Frontier Report No. 13. Dubai: Why We Tech Ltd. Available at: thewhyweproject.com