See now, act now: How to interact with customers to enhance social commerce engagement?

•Live interactions consist of personalization, responsiveness, entertainment, mutuality, and perceived control.•This work aims to explore the effect of live interactions on social commerce engagement based on the S-O-R paradigm.•Live interactions positively affect perceived usefulness, and negatively impact perceived risk and psychological distance.•Susceptibility to informative influence moderates the effect of live interactions on social commerce engagement.•Managers could enhance users’ social commerce engagement by promoting live interactions.