Short-Video Content Marketing and Consumer Engagement

A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

This study presents a systematic literature review examining the theoretical foundations, content antecedents, and behavioral mechanisms underlying the relationship between short-form video marketing and consumer engagement. A structured literature search was conducted through the Scopus database using five purposively designed search prompts, initially identifying 306 records. Following deduplication (n = 58) and screening based on topical relevance, publication type, and research context, 104 peer-reviewed journal articles met the inclusion criteria and were subjected to qualitative synthesis. The findings indicate that short-form video platforms, including TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, have fundamentally reconfigured the digital marketing ecosystem by operating simultaneously as content distribution systems, algorithmic recommendation environments, and content-driven commerce platforms. Three dominant theoretical frameworks emerged from the corpus: the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model, the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), and Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT). Among these, the SOR model was the most frequently applied, although its use across the literature has been largely mechanical, with limited exploration of boundary conditions. Content characteristics including informativeness, entertainment, interactivity, authenticity, and audiovisual congruence consistently emerged as primary antecedents of consumer engagement and purchase intention. Consumer trust and flow experience were identified as the most frequently cited mediating mechanisms, while platform recommendation algorithms, increasingly examined through multimodal computational approaches, and product category type served as significant moderators. The review further identifies recurring structural gaps in the literature, notably the dominance of China-based samples, the overreliance on self-reported data, and the scarcity of studies that simultaneously test boundary conditions across multiple contextual dimensions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed with particular emphasis on the urgent need for research grounded in Southeast Asian contexts, with Indonesia as a priority setting for future empirical inquiry.