SHORT-FORM VIDEO MARKETING AND CONSUMER PURCHASE INTENTION: EVIDENCE FROM EMERGING MARKETS

Abstract

Short-form video platforms—TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and a growing family of regional analogues—have reshaped the consumer decision journey in emerging digital markets, where Generation Z and younger Millennials now dominate the user base. The scholarly response has been fast but fragmented. Work in the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S-O-R) tradition treats content attributes as the causal stimulus; work in the parasocial interaction (PSI) tradition foregrounds relational bonds between viewers and micro-influencers; a newer algorithmic-affordance strand emphasises platform-driven personalisation and social proof as exogenous forces. These three streams rarely speak to one another. This paper develops an integrative multilevel model that brings them into a single framework and embeds it within a cross-market moderator structure covering digital-infrastructure maturity, mobile-payment penetration, and cultural collectivism. Hypotheses are derived for the direct, mediated, and moderated pathways; the model is then evaluated through a calibrated Monte Carlo simulation (N = 50,000 draws) benchmarked against 24 empirical studies published between 2022 and 2024. Algorithmic personalisation (β = 0.31, 95 % CI [0.27, 0.35]) and parasocial trust (β = 0.28, 95 % CI [0.24, 0.32]) emerge as the dominant proximal antecedents of purchase intention, while cultural and infrastructural moderators reshape both direct and indirect effects in ways that vary systematically across markets. The paper reframes short-form video marketing as a socio-technical system in which platform algorithms, relational cues, and content features jointly determine consumer response, and derives practical guidance for cross-market campaign design. (Word count: 266)

Keywords: Short-form video; social commerce; purchase intention; S-O-R model; parasocial interaction; algorithmic personalisation; emerging markets; structural equation modelling