This is a self-archived – parallel published version of this article in the 

publication archive of the University of Vaasa. It might differ from the original. 

Short video marketing: what, when and how short-

branded videos facilitate consumer engagement 

Author(s): Dong, Xuebing; Liu, Hong; Xi, Nannan; Liao, Junyun; Yang, Zhi 

Title: Short video marketing: what, when and how short-branded videos 

facilitate consumer engagement 

Year: 2023 

Version: Accepted manuscript 

Copyright © 2023 Emerald Publishing Limited. This manuscript version is made 

available under the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 

4.0 International (CC BY–NC 4.0) license, 

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ 

Please cite the original version: 

 Dong, X., Liu, H., Xi, N., Liao, J. & Yang, Z. (2023). Short video 

marketing: what, when and how short-branded videos facilitate 

consumer engagement. Internet research. 

https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-02-2022-0121 

 



Internet Research
Short video marketing: What, when, and how short branded 

videos facilitate consumer engagement

Journal: Internet Research

Manuscript ID INTR-02-2022-0121.R3

Manuscript Type: Research Paper

Keywords: Video marketing, Digital marketing, Social media marketing, Short 
branded video, Consumer engagement

 

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Short video marketing: What, when, and how short branded 

videos facilitate consumer engagement

Abstract

Purpose: This study explores whether and how four main factors of short branded video content 

(content matching, information relevance, storytelling, and emotionality) facilitate consumer 

engagement (likes, comments, and shares), as well as the moderating effect of the release time 

(morning, afternoon, and evening) in such relationships.

Design/methodology/approach: This study uses Python to write programs to crawl relevant data 

information, such as consumer engagement and short video release time. It combines coding methods 

to empirically analyze the impact of short branded video content characteristics on consumer 

engagement. A total of 10,240 Weibo short videos (total duration: 238.645 hours) from 122 

well-known brands are utilized as research objects.

Findings: Empirical results show that the content characteristics of short videos significantly 

impacted consumer engagement. Furthermore, the release time of videos significantly moderated the 

relationship between the emotionality of short videos and consumer engagement. Content released in 

the morning enhanced the positive impact of warmth, excitement, and joy on consumer engagement, 

compared to that released in the afternoon.

Practical implications: Our findings provide new insights for the dissemination of products and brand 

culture through short videos. We suggest that enterprises that use brand videos consider content 

matching, information relevance, storytelling, and emotionality in their design.

Originality/value: From a broader perspective, this study constructs a new method for 

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comprehensively evaluating short branded video content, based on four dimensions (content 

matching, information relevance, storytelling, and emotionality) and explores the value of these 

dimensions for creating social media marketing success, such as via consumer engagement.

Keywords: Video marketing, Digital marketing, Social media marketing, Short branded video, 

Consumer engagement

Paper type: Research paper

1. Introduction

The growing number of emerging information systems and the maturity of mobile Internet 

technologies have accelerated the popularity of social media platforms (Li and Xie, 2020) and 

reshaped marketing praxis (Gavilanes et al., 2018). Using different social networks and platforms, 

companies can deliver marketing and brand content to targeted audiences in an efficient and timely 

manner (Teixeira and Wedel, 2012). Among social marketing techniques, short videos have become 

prominent (Kang et al., 2012). The combination of short-form videos and social media platforms 

increases the richness and vividness of information and improves communication efficiency, 

providing great opportunities for socially based interactive marketing and advertising that engender 

emotional arousal, immersion, trust, and social ties (Kang et al., 2022; Gavilanes et al., 2018; 

Teixeira et al., 2012). The short-form video market has been growing at an astonishing pace. In 2020, 

the global online video platform market reached 1.17 billion dollars and is expected to reach 3.35 

billion dollars in 2027 (Hengzhou Bozhi (QYR) Software and Business Service Research Center, 

2021). Watching short-form videos, especially on mobile devices, is becoming the principal way for 

most consumers to acquire information (Song et al., 2021), and short-form video platforms such as 

TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels have concomitantly become the main battlefield of 

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marketing.

One of the biggest challenges in today's digital marketing for firms' consumer relationship 

management is to engage consumers through social media content in all possible ways (Pansari and 

Kumar, 2017). Consumer relationship management is considered an important firm activity (Pansari 

and Kumar, 2017) and an approach for firms and organizations to acquire and maintain a sustainable 

competitive advantage. Accordingly, in video content-based social media marketing, consumer 

engagement can be used as the key indicator to measure digital and social media marketing 

performance (Gavilanes et al., 2018). However, competition in short video marketing is becoming 

fiercer; firms currently face huge challenges in achieving satisfactory performance of short video 

marketing. To be more specific, the key questions related to creating short branded videos are: What 

kind of content can attract and retain consumers? How do consumers engage with them? Does the 

release time of short branded videos affect consumer engagement?

A review of existing studies on video and social media marketing reveals a lack of 

comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing the success of short branded video 

marketing. It is unclear what short-form video content consists of and what dimensions it includes 

from a holistic perspective. In addition, it is important to know which factors and dimensions of 

short-form video content play important roles in enhancing consumer engagement. Moreover, due to 

the social nature of short-form videos, the time of publishing and posting the video content may be 

particularly important. On one hand, unlike the passive relationship between audiences and 

traditional media such as TV and video platforms, social media users have high autonomy to actively 

choose marketing and advertising content (Liu et al., 2018); on the other hand, they expect and crave 

more social connections with others (Mulier et al., 2021). The influence of the time of posting video 

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content seems to be related to the users' mental resources and their perception of social relatedness 

(Zor et al., 2022). Kanuri et al. (2018) pioneered exploring the impact of the time of social media 

platform story posting on clicks to story links, but to our knowledge, there is almost no relevant 

research on the impact of posting time on the marketing performance of short videos. In terms of 

research methods, this study crawls relevant data information based on self-developed Python 

programs to ensure the objectivity and authenticity of the findings which makes up for the 

shortcomings of most existing studies based on self-reported surveys.

To address the aforementioned research gaps, this study empirically investigates the influence of 

four main factors of short branded video content (content matching, information relevance, 

storytelling, and emotionality) on consumer engagement (including likes, comments, and shares) by 

analyzing 10,240 Weibo short videos (total duration: 238.645 hours) from 122 well-known brands. 

We also examine the potential moderating effect of the release time. The study makes two main 

contributions. First, we extracted the four important factors, namely, content matching, information 

relevance, storytelling, and emotionality using a theoretical and empirical approach. Second, this 

study provides strong evidence on how these factors influence consumer engagement with time as a 

boundary condition. The findings contribute to content marketing and relationship management 

theory and provide several practical implications. In this regard, the study shows that high-quality 

short videos can attract consumers' attention, enhance consumer engagement, and increase product 

and brand publicity.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Short video marketing

Video marketing refers to an online platform --with content as the core and creativity as the 

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orientation--that uses finely planned video content to achieve product marketing and brand 

communication. With the progress of media technology, visual information has become more 

prevalent on social media, and companies increasingly rely on videos to promote their products and 

services (Li et al., 2019). Compared with text or static images, videos contain richer information, 

including facial, body, and vocal features that enhance their popularity (Kang et al., 2022). 

Therefore, visual information, which is considered unstructured data (Sudhir, 2016), may play an 

important role in the consumer decision-making process.

Current video marketing research shows that online video consumption is an important driver to 

economics. From the perspective of consumer interest, engagement, and processing fluency, Mulier 

et al. (2021) found that mobile vertical video advertising can improve consumer interest and 

engagement compared to horizontal video advertising. In addition, the optimization of video title 

information content, video title emotional intensity, video description information content, and video 

tag volume can affect consumers' viewing behaviors (Tafesse, 2020), and short videos are also an 

effective tool for marketing movies and other online contents (Liu et al., 2018). Therefore, research 

on the characteristics of short video content is important for visual marketing.

2.2. Characteristics of short branded video content

Recently, an increasing number of scholars have focused on the interaction between branded 

marketing content and consumers on social media. For example, the interactivity, subjective norms, 

and social ties of social media positively affect users' attitudes and behaviors related to sharing 

relevant information (Lin et al., 2019), and brand post characteristics (including vividness and 

interactivity) and brand post content (including information and entertainment) on social media affect 

the popularity of brand posts and consumer engagement (Schultz, 2017; Xi and Hamari, 2020). She 

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et al. (2021) found that headline characteristics and account types significantly influence the 

attractiveness of social media posts, and content characteristics and media types affect the number of 

likes of social media posts. Other research indicates that the credibility of product and industry 

knowledge and dissemination of company content information significantly affect consumer brand 

engagement (Bapna et al., 2019), and multimedia content--such as videos, brand names, tags, and 

subjective vocabulary--effectively increases consumers' positive word-of-mouth behavior related to 

brand posts (Kim et al., 2019).

Short branded video content refers to the products, characters, music, text, and other related 

information contained in the short videos released by a brand. For short videos, characters, narratives, 

and atmosphere are important. Research on characters shows that attractive spokespersons positively 

impact consumers' purchase intentions (Kim et al., 2021), and celebrities and cute elements, such as 

babies and animals, are crucial to stimulating positive emotions, such as excitement (Tellis et al., 

2019). Short videos with a narrative structure can effectively stimulate the decision-making and 

cognitive integration functions of brain regions, leading to better evaluations and more positive 

attitudes toward a brand (Wang et al., 2016). The higher the perceived fit of short videos to 

consumers, the stronger consumers' preference for the brand (Batra et al., 2010). Furthermore, 

detailed branded product information may be particularly important to promoting brands and their 

products. Maaya et al. (2020) indicate that information is important in decision-makers' choices, and 

the attribute information provided during online shopping increases consumers' attention to relevant 

attributes, thereby affecting consumer choice. Product-related information and source credibility in 

user reviews positively affect consumers' cognitive attitudes and purchase behavior (Aghakhani et 

al., 2018). Furthermore, short videos contain information that expresses certain emotions that may 

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affect consumers' purchase decisions (Zhou et al., 2021). Positive emotions facilitate consumers' 

more emotion-consistent behaviors (Teixeira et al., 2012; Tellis et al., 2019).

Most previous studies mainly investigated the following four features of brand posts: content 

matching, information relevance, storytelling, and emotionality (see Green and Brock, 2000; 

Kruglanski, 2006; Agnihotri et al., 2019). While most of the brand posts investigated consist of 

textual and pictorial information, Tellis et al. (2019) examined what drives video ad sharing across 

multiple social media platforms. In our research, we investigated the role of the four factors in short 

branded videos.

We selected 26 important items from Weibo short videos and invited 10 experienced Weibo 

users to rate the items according to their importance. We deleted 10 items based on the literature and 

user scoring. The remaining 16 most critical items have been cited extensively in the past and have 

attracted users' attention. We used 11 of the 16 items as coding indicators for four factors that we 

identify by referring to the literature and expert discussion. We included the remaining 5 items as 

control variables because of their importance (for more detailed information, see Appendix 1).

Finally, consistent with previous research (Dall'Olio and Vakratsas, 2022), we considered the 

characteristics of a short branded video from the perspective of its content and execution. Content 

represents what is communicated in an ad, and execution represents how content is communicated. 

For content, our study focuses on information relevance and emotionality, and for execution it 

centers on content matching and storytelling. We explored the impact of both content and execution 

on consumer engagement. Information refers to the various contents people transmit or receive, 

which could enhance their understanding of their surroundings, and information relevance alludes to 

the characters, products, and others. Emotion is part of the attitude, here concerning an individual's 

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attitude toward objects. Emotionality exists all the time, and consumers have different emotional 

experiences related to different contents, affecting subsequent behavioral responses. Content 

matching distinguishes the degree of causal correlation among phenomena and involves the 

atmosphere created. Storytelling refers to the description of a story and mainly involves the storyline, 

including two parts: narration and story. 

2.3. Consumer engagement behavior

Consumer engagement has been widely discussed in relationship marketing as an important outcome 

measure of a firm's activities (Pansari and Kumar, 2017). It refers to the degree of connection that 

individuals form with organizations, including services, products, brands, and activities (Vivek et al., 

2012). Consumer engagement behavior has been defined as the behavioral manifestation of 

consumers toward brands or companies caused by motivation drivers, including word-of-mouth 

activities, recommendations, helping other consumers, writing comments, and even participating in 

legal proceedings (Van Doorn et al., 2010). Regarding consumer brand engagement, Liu et al. (2019) 

showed that recognition, community identification, and self-efficacy have significant positive effects 

on consumer engagement, which consequently enhances brand loyalty. Obilo et al. (2021) stated that 

consumer brand engagement reflects the consumer's response to a good experience in the process of 

interacting with brands, and it contains only behavioral dimensions; consumer engagement is 

positively associated with brand advocacy. Moreover, building relationships and stimulating 

emotional commitment can also increase consumer engagement behavior (Hu and Chaudhry, 2020), 

and highly engaged consumers usually produce multiple behaviors, such as word of mouth, providing 

consumer ratings, and blogging (Verhoef et al., 2010). 

In terms of behavioral engagement, scholars have focused on the number of likes, comments, 

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and shares, and have examined the specific factors that affect these behavioral engagements. For 

example, word-of-mouth (positive or negative) and its interaction with community types (social or 

functional target groups) affect the number of user likes and comments (Relling et al., 2016). The 

interaction between information readability and hedonism (Davis et al., 2019) and language 

behavior, rhetorical style, cross-information dynamics, and visual elements influence information 

sharing (Ordenes et al., 2019). Moreover, factors such as the launch of new products, product 

display, consumer feedback, entertainment information, organization brand, text readability, 

processing fluency, and advertising content attributes significantly impact consumers' likes, 

comments, and shares (Gavilanes et al., 2018; Pancer et al., 2019).

Based on the focus of this study--namely, short branded videos--and the availability of data, we 

use indicators of brand post popularity--that is, the number of likes, comments, and shares--to 

measure consumer engagement behavior.

3. Research Framework and Hypotheses Development

Short branded video content is an important way to promote a brand and its products, and the 

characteristics of short branded video content are very important. Consumers who watch a short 

video will first hear background music and notice the location. The degree of matching between each 

of these types of background and the product content displayed in the short video will affect 

consumers' perceived fluency, which is expected to affect their attitudes toward the branded product 

(Lee and Labroo, 2004). Therefore, content matching refers to the degree of matching of the short 

branded video’s background music with the brand or product and the short branded video’s 

background with the brand or product. As consumers obtain brand product information through short 

videos, these videos must convey specific, clear, and credible informational content, and the 

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credibility of the information is expected to affect consumers' cognitive attitudes and engagement 

(Agnihotri and Bhattacharya, 2019). Therefore, information relevance refers to the relevance of 

information conveyed by the short branded video to a brand or product (i.e., whether and to what 

extent the short video conveys brand or product information) and the clarity and credibility of the 

short video product and non-product informational content. Concise language description and 

high-quality narratives are easier to gain people's attention and promote consumer engagement 

(Green and Brock, 2000; Atkinson et al., 2018).

    From discussions with experts in our research group, we consider storytelling to include the 

conciseness of the short branded video's language and the excellent production of short video stories. 

Emotionality refers to the emotion category conveyed by short branded videos. According to Tellis et 

al. (2019) on the driving factors of video ad sharing, we identified 16 emotion categories, including 

anger, courage, deprivation, disgust, excitement, failure, fear, hatred, humor, joy, love, pride, 

sadness, shame, triumph, and warmth. Consumer engagement behavior includes comments and 

shares. This study uses content matching, information relevance, storytelling, and emotionality as 

independent variables, and consumer engagement behavior as the dependent variable. The research 

model is illustrated in Figure 1.

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Content Matching:

CBMB, CBB

Likes

Comments

Shares

Control Variables

Content Characteristics of 

short branded videos

H1

H2

H3

H4

H5

Consumer Engagement 

Behavior

Release time of day

Storytelling:

LC, SQ

Information Relevance:

PR, CC

Emotionality:

excitement, joy, love, 

pride, and warmth 

Short Video 

Duration
Attractive

Image 

Endorsement
Intonation

Brand 

Industry

Fig 1. Research model

Note: CBMB: the degree of matching of short video background music with the brand or product; CBB: the degree of 

matching of the short video background with the brand or product; PR: the relevance of information conveyed by the 

short video to brand or product; CC: the clarity and credibility of the short video product and non-product information 

content; LC: the conciseness of the short video language; SQ: the excellence of production of short video stories.

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3.1. Characteristics of short branded video content and consumer engagement behavior

3.1.1 Characteristics of short branded video content: Content Matching

Studies related to fluency theory (Labroo and Lee, 2006; Shapiro and Nielsen, 2013) indicate that a 

fit brings higher perceived fluency, and a fluent consumer experience contributes to the formation of 

a more positive consumer attitude toward a brand, thereby promoting consumer engagement. 

Previous research has shown that a lack of fit leads to the use of cognitive resources to resolve 

inconsistencies, which may reduce an individual's attention to information (Wang et al., 2021). 

Accordingly, when a fit occurs, people are more likely to have a good feeling about what they have 

done, and then make a more positive evaluation response (Kruglanski, 2006). Among extended 

brands with a high degree of brand concept consistency and product feature similarity to the original 

brand, the stronger the perception of fit is, the more significant consumers' preference for the 

extended brand will be, which helps to form a higher brand evaluation (Batra et al., 2010). Similarly, 

music that fits more closely with the content of a short video is likely to enhance consumers' belief in 

the brand, thus promoting consumers' interaction with the brand. Therefore, we propose the 

following hypothesis:

H1: Factors related to content matching positively influence consumer engagement behaviors 

with short branded videos including likes, comments, and shares.

3.1.2 Characteristics of short branded video content: Information Relevance

On social media, brand-related posts that convey irrelevant information about the brand hinder 

consumers' searching for brand-related information (Ha et al., 2021), thereby reducing the interaction 

between consumers and the brand or other consumers. Consumers tend to make decisions based on 

information in the external environment and experiences stored in memory. Given limited time and 

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energy, they always choose to receive information that is beneficial to them, whereas irrelevant 

information weakens their product beliefs and may even have negative effects (Guo et al., 2020). 

Agnihotri and Bhattacharya (2019) used indicators of advertising credibility, advertising clarity, and 

advertising content richness to evaluate consumers' attitudes toward advertising. Consumers' 

credibility perception of short videos can significantly predict their intention to continue using short 

video apps to obtain information (Song et al., 2021). Furthermore, information source credibility and 

social interaction can affect consumers' perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, and social 

support in s-commerce (Hu et al., 2022). In this study, brand credibility refers to the credibility of 

product information. The higher the credibility of the brand, the more it can promote consumers' 

consideration and choice of the brand. Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:

H2: Factors related to information relevance positively influence consumer engagement 

behaviors with short branded videos including likes, comments, and shares.

3.1.3 Characteristics of short branded video content: Storytelling

Research related to transportation theory shows that when individuals are drawn into a storytelling 

world, the narrative affects their beliefs about the real world (Green and Brock, 2000). Information 

transmitted in narrative form can have a greater impact on judgment and decision-making than that 

presented through lists, and people are more likely to praise it (Hsiao et al., 2013; Gelper et al., 

2018). Elements of storytelling blogs, such as perceived aesthetics, narrative structure, and 

self-reference, indirectly influence readers' intentions through empathy and attitude. High-quality and 

popular stories obtain higher transmission rates more easily (Green and Brock, 2000), resonating 

with consumers and shortening the distance between them and the brand, thereby enhancing 

interaction. Moreover, learners are more accustomed to simplified language systems (Atkinson et al., 

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2018). Thus, concise and clear language offers more advantages in interpersonal communication 

(Garritty et al., 2020). Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis: 

H3: Factors related to storytelling positively influence consumer engagement behaviors with 

short branded videos including likes, comments, and shares.

3.1.4 Characteristics of short branded video content: Emotionality

Studies related to the theory of emotional contagion show that emotional attributes can be transmitted 

through media, can be positive or negative, and can impact consumers' attitudes (Hasford et al., 

2015; Smith and Rose, 2020). Positive emotions, such as gratitude, joy, and love, have a strong 

positive impact on consumer behavior (Dong et al., 2022; Dong et al., 2023; Kranzbühler et al., 

2020), and advertisements with positive emotions related to, for example, entertainment, excitement, 

inspiration, and warmth, generate more sharing (Tellis et al., 2019). Positive emotions, such as 

surprise and joy, concentrate people's attention, directly or indirectly affecting consumer retention 

(Teixeira et al., 2012) and thus influencing consumer purchase behavior. Negative emotions also play 

an important role in the relationship between consumers and brands. For example, sadness causes 

consumers to talk less about the brand experience, and anger leads to consumers' complaints. 

Accordingly, we propose the following hypothesis:

H4: Factors related to emotionality positively influence consumer engagement behaviors with 

short branded videos including likes, comments, and shares.

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3.2. Moderating effect: Short branded videos' release time

In almost all marketing practices (e.g., advertising content, new products, and events), the release 

time is crucial to the success of marketing activities. Many studies (e.g., Bagchi and Cheema, 2013; 

Kanuri et al., 2018) have indicated one’s level of emotional arousal varies over time. Specifically, the 

availability of working memory peaks in the morning, but as the day goes on and an individual must 

undertake tasks and experience stress, resources are gradually depleted. Stress-induced elevated 

cortisol levels impair the availability of working memory, and consumers also increase their 

preference for simplified processing and reliance on reference choices (Luethi et al., 2009; 

Pocheptsova et al., 2009), especially regarding emotional expression. Therefore, at different times of 

the day, different levels of emotional arousal may have varied impact on consumer behavior, 

including consumer engagement behavior. In the morning, consumers' emotional resources and 

working memory may be stronger, and high arousal may significantly impact their engagement. In 

the afternoon, with the depletion of emotional and cognitive resources, consumers may increase their 

preferences for simplified processing and dependence on reference choices (Pocheptsova et al., 

2009), and the impact of high arousal on consumer engagement may be weakened. In the evening, 

with the gradual recovery of emotional resources, the impact of high arousal on consumer 

engagement may increase. Thus, exposure to short videos in the morning may stimulate stronger 

consumers' enthusiasm for content engagement than in the afternoon and evening. We propose the 

following hypothesis:

H5: The positive correlation between emotionality and consumer engagement behavior is higher 

for short videos released in the morning and afternoon than for those released in the evening.

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4. Research Methods

4.1. Data collection

To explore the impact of the characteristics of short branded video content and their time of release 

on the success of short branded video marketing, we selected the top 200 brands listed on "The 

Annual Report on The World's Most Valuable and Strongest Brands"1 but excluded 78 brands that 

did not have Sina Weibo accounts or did not publish video content. Sina Weibo (referred to as 

Weibo) is a social media platform based on user relationships. It realizes real-time sharing of 

information and interaction among users through text, pictures, videos, and other forms, and is one of 

the main channels for short video marketing in China. In December 2019, Weibo was selected as the 

2019 China Brand Power Ceremony Model 100 Brand. Based on Weibo's social and interactive 

nature, we chose it as a media platform from which to obtain short videos. Eventually, from 

November 2018 to January 2020, we took 10,240 short branded videos of 122 brands related to 

products released on the Weibo platform. Weibo has an official certification mark, and we can ensure 

that the selected accounts were the brand's official Weibo accounts. The 122 selected brands 

represent 20 common industry categories, including apparel (e.g., Nike), business services (e.g., 

Deloitte), retail (e.g., Walmart), and technology (e.g., Amazon). Detailed brand information is 

provided in Appendix 2.

1 Founded in 1996, Brand Finance is the world's leading independent brand valuation consultancy. Brand Finance has 
the advantages of independence, technical credibility, transparency, and expertise. Every year, thousands of the 
world's largest brands are tested to evaluate which brands are the strongest and most valuable. Brand Finance assisted 
in the crafting of the internationally recognized standard on Brand Valuation (ISO 10668) and the recently approved 
standard on Brand Evaluation (ISO 20671).

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4.2. Variables and measures

4.2.1. Pilot study

According to the characteristics of the Weibo platform, and combined with the discussion results 

from professors and research team members, we tested the substitution effect of 22 variable 

indicators in four dimensions related to short video content on the characteristics of short video 

content and the importance of their impact on consumer engagement behavior. These variable 

indicators were the degree of matching between the video's background music and the brand or 

product (CBMB); the degree of matching between the video's background and the brand or product 

(CBB); the relevance of the information conveyed by the video to the brand or product (PR); the 

clarity and credibility of video's product and non-product information content (CC); the conciseness 

of the video's language (LC); the excellence of production of the video's stories (SQ); and the 

emotional content related to anger, courage, deprivation, disgust, excitement, failure, fear, hatred, 

humor, joy, love, pride, sadness, shame, triumph, and warmth. This information was subsequently 

coded.

We recruited 109 participants from Chinese universities (47.71% female, 52.29% male; Mage = 

22.3) to evaluate the short video content items (see Appendix 3 for the questionnaire). Each 

participant was asked to watch two randomly selected short branded videos and rate the related items 

of short video content characteristics and their importance (1 = extremely unimportant; 5 = extremely 

important). After collecting 218 valid questionnaires, we conducted a regression analysis with the six 

content element indicators as independent variables and consumers' willingness to share short 

branded videos as the dependent variable (Chen and Berger, 2016; Barasch et al., 2018). Our 

findings indicate that the degree of matching between the short video background music and the 

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brand or product (CBMB), and between the short video background and the brand or product (CBB); 

the relevance of information conveyed by the short video to the brand or product (PR), the clarity and 

credibility of the short video product and non-product information content (CC), the conciseness of 

the short video language (LC), and the excellence of production of short video stories (SQ) were all 

positively correlated with consumers' willingness to share (Table I). Moreover, we found that 

participants believed that the excitement, joy, love, pride, and warmth conveyed by the short videos 

had a significant positive impact on the popularity of short videos (Table II). Most research related to 

emotions considers both positive and negative emotions. However, positive emotion is more germane 

to short branded videos because their main purpose is to convey positive thoughts (Kim et al., 2019). 

Positive emotional expression can bring more positive emotions to consumers, leading to their 

positive attitude toward brand products (Rocklage and Fazio, 2020) and enhancing consumers' 

willingness to interact with short videos. Combining the pilot study results and discussions with 

experts, we decided to consider only positive emotions, such as excitement, joy, love, pride, and 

warmth, in the main study.

In addition, the significance level of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test of unstandardized residual 

and standardized residual was 0.200, which was significantly > 0.05, and the dependent variable 

conformed to a normal distribution (Table III). Simultaneously, we drew a P-P graph, and the results 

showed that the standard predicted value and the standard residual value were linearly related, 

indicating good homoscedasticity.

Therefore, we inferred that the 11 indicators (CBMB, CBB, PR, CC, LC, SQ, excitement, joy, 

love, pride, and warmth) could effectively represent the characteristics of short video content and are 

important predictors of consumer engagement. The following section describes our further empirical 

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analyses.

Table I
Impact of short video content characteristics on users' willingness to share

Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized Coefficients
Model

B Std. Error Beta
t Sig.

(Constant) .766 .279 2.744 .007

CBMB .147 .074 .148 1.988 .048

CBB .203 .070 .204 2.904 .004

PR .185 .071 .179 2.621 .009

CC .243 .061 .247 4.001 .000

LC .130 .059 .139 2.228 .027

SQ .197 .059 .234 3.341 .001

a. Dependent variable: Willingness to share.

b. Note: connection between background music and brand (CBMB); connection between background and brand 

(CBB); product relevance (PR); content credibility (CC); language conciseness (LC); and story quality (SQ)

Table II
Emotional expression in short videos

Emotion Frequency of 

Occurrence

Emotion Frequency of 

Occurrence

Emotion Frequency of 

Occurrence

Anger 2.75% Fear 2.75% Sadness 0.92%

Courage 13.30% Hatred 1.38% Shame 3.67%

Deprivation 2.75% Humor 13.76% Triumph 11.93%

Disgust 1.38% Joy 62.39% Warmth 53.67%

Excitement 55.96% Love 48.17%

Failure 0.46% Pride 46.79%

Table III
Residual Analysis

Unstandardized standardized B [95.0% CI] CollinearityModel

B Std Error

t Sig.

Lower limit Upper 

limit

tolerance VIF

0.766 0.279 2.744 0.007 0.215 1.316

0.147 0.074 0.148 1.988 0.048 0.001 0.292 0.468 2.135

0.203 0.070 0.204 2.904 0.004 0.065 0.341 0.526 1.903

0.185 0.071 0.179 2.621 0.009 0.046 0.324 0.558 1.791

0.243 0.061 0.247 4.001 0.000 0.123 0.363 0.680 1.471

0.130 0.059 0.139 2.228 0.027 0.015 0.246 0.667 1.500

alpha

CBMB

CBB

PR

CC

LC

SQ 0.197 0.059 0.234 3.341 0.001 0.081 0.313 0.531 1.882
a. Dependent variable: Willingness to share

b. Note: connection between background music and brand (CBMB); connection between background and brand 

(CBB); product relevance (PR); content credibility (CC); language conciseness (LC); and story quality (SQ)

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Additionally, we measured participants' familiarity with Weibo ("I am not at all/very familiar 

with Sina Weibo," "I am not at all/ very knowledgeable about Sina Weibo," and "I have no/much 

experience with Sina Weibo" using five-point semantic differential scales; Davis et al., 2019). To 

prove that the results obtained were independent of participants' familiarity with Weibo, we 

conducted another regression analysis for participants who were very familiar with Sina Weibo 

(familiarity > 3; α = 0.828) and obtained consistent results. That is, CBMB, CBB, PR, CC, LC, and 

SQ were positively correlated with consumers' willingness to share (Table IV).

Table IV
Impact of short video content indicators on its characteristics (familiarity > 3)

Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized Coefficients
Model

B Std. Error Beta
t Sig.

(Constant) .561 .272 2.063 .041

CBMB .178 .080 .183 2.235 .027

CBB .193 .074 .196 2.617 .010

PR .171 .076 .168 2.251 .026

CC .263 .071 .258 3.714 .000

LC .155 .064 .163 2.422 .017

SQ .234 .063 .268 3.743 .000

a. Dependent variable: Willingness to share

b. Note: connection between background music and brand (CBMB); connection between background and brand 

(CBB); product relevance (PR); content credibility (CC); language conciseness (LC); and story quality (SQ)

4.2.2. Characteristics of short video content

We explored the four dimensions of the characteristics of short branded videos (content matching, 

information relevance, storytelling, and emotionality), with the 11 indicators. In addition to 

conducting the pilot study to choose the indicators, the four researchers discussed the meaning of the 

indicators multiple times before formal coding began. Two coders who were blind to the purpose of 

the research scored each short video on a five-point Likert scale (1 = very low content matching, 

weak information relevance, poor storytelling, and negative emotional expression; 3 = moderation; 

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and 5 = very high content matching, strong information relevance, excellent storytelling, and positive 

emotional expression). They were postgraduates majoring in Internet marketing under the 

supervision of two Ph.D.level associate professors of Internet marketing. The coders individually 

rated the videos and met twice a week, under the guidance of the two professors, to negotiate 

inconsistent results. Manual coding method is considered more reliable for content analysis, as the 

data obtained through coding are more accurate (Song et al., 2020). The two coders took three 

months to conduct the coding work, and the two resulting sets of data were highly correlated (the 

overall interrater agreement percentage was 0.859).

4.2.3. Consumer engagement behavior

Based on previous research (Akpinar and Berger, 2017; Gavilanes et al., 2018; Pancer et al., 2019), 

we used the indicators of brand posts' popularity, that is, the number of likes, comments, and shares, 

to measure consumer engagement. Likes are a common measure of social media engagement in that 

they enable users to express love, recognition, and appreciation of content without leaving comments. 

They are considered a more personal and direct form of consumer engagement. Comments derive 

mainly from consumers' demands for social interaction and express their active engagement in social 

media. Shares are a high level of social engagement that allow users to recommend relevant content 

to their followers, thus affecting the attitudes and behaviors of other users (Ordenes et al., 2019; Li 

and Xie, 2020).

In March 2020, we recorded the number of likes, comments, and shares for each short video 

released by each brand during an observation period of 15 months, from November 2018 to January 

2020. The principal reason for choosing this period is that it contained different seasons, which 

enabled us to avoid the influence of festivals, customs, and other related factors. We used Python to 

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write programs to crawl the number of likes, comments, and shares of the videos; it can objectively 

and accurately reflect the cumulative volume of each video. As all kinds of information automatically 

pop up on the Weibo platform consumers are unlikely to see previously brand-released short video 

messages unless they make a specific inquiry, we regard the numbers we counted as the maximum 

values of likes, comments, and shares.

4.2.4. Short videos release time

Following Kanuri et al.'s (2018) research on the best time to release a social media story, we used 

Python programming to crawl the time of day of each brand's release and divided the data into night, 

morning, afternoon, and evening (00:00–5:59, 6:00–11:59, 12:00–17:59, and 18:00–23:59, 

respectively). Finding that the number of short videos released at night during the observation period 

was very small, we considered only three time periods (morning, afternoon, and evening) in the 

formal analysis and used the evening period as the baseline.

4.2.5. Control variables

The control variables were duration of the video, attractiveness of the video, endorsement in the 

video, first-person tone, and brand industry. Tellis et al. (2019) pointed to an asymmetric inverted 

U-shaped relationship between duration and advertising sharing. Specifically, they found that the best 

advertisement duration was 1.2–1.7 minutes, and shorter ads generated more shares than longer ads. 

While likable music can bring pleasure and may stimulate positive beliefs in consumers, positive 

comments from attractive reviewers can improve brand evaluation and positively impact consumers' 

purchase intentions (Ozanne et al., 2019). Some cute elements, such as babies and animals, can also 

help arouse positive emotions (Tellis et al., 2019). Moreover, intonation is an important factor in 

effective online communication that enhances the hedonic value of consumers' online experiences.

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We also considered the industry fixed effects. The 122 brands we explored represented 20 

common sectors, with the aerospace industry as a reference. Notably, commercial services, financial 

services, oil and gas, real estate, and utilities may be less attractive to consumers. Table V shows 

detailed descriptions and sources of all the variables. Table VI presents descriptive statistics.

Table V Variables description and sources
Variables Notation Detailed Description Variable type Source

Consumer engagement:

Likes LIKE Total number of likes received by 

video

Continuous Weibo

Comments COMMENT Total number of comments on 

video

Continuous Weibo

Shares SHARE Total number of forwards of 

video 

Continuous Weibo

Characteristics of short video 

content (1–5):

Connection Background 

Music and Brand

CBMB Matching of background music 

and brand or product

Continuous Weibo 

code

Connection Background and 

Brand

CBB Matching of background and 

brand or product

Continuous Weibo 

code

Product Relevance PR Relevance of information 

conveyed by video to brand or 

product

Continuous Weibo 

code

Content Credibility CC Clarity and credibility of product 

and non-product information 

content

Continuous Weibo 

code

Language Conciseness LC Conciseness of language Continuous Weibo 

code

Story Quality SQ Excellence of production of story Continuous Weibo 

code

Excitement Emotion Excitement Level of excitement in video Continuous Weibo 

code

Joy Emotion Joy Level of joy in video Continuous Weibo 

code

Love Emotion Love Level of love in video Continuous Weibo 

code

Pride Emotion Pride Level of pride in videos Continuous Weibo 

code

Warmth Emotion Warmth Level of warmth in video Continuous Weibo 

code

Moderator:

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Time of day Morning

Afternoon

Evening

Release time of day (morning, 

afternoon, evening)

Dummy Weibo

Controls:

New Follower NF Number of fans of the brand Continuous Weibo

Length Seconds LS Total length of video Continuous Weibo

Content Attractiveness CA Attractiveness of video content Continuous Weibo 

code

Endorser Attractiveness EA Attractiveness of endorsements in 

video

Continuous Weibo 

code

First-person Tone FPT Use of first-person tone Dummy Weibo 

code

Time Fixed Effects Y2019 Short branded videos published 

on Weibo from November 1, 

2018, to January 31, 2020

Dummy

Industry Fixed Effects Industry 1 Aerospace Dummy Brand 

Finance 

Global 500

Industry 2 Alcohol Dummy

Industry 3 Apparel Dummy

Industry 4 Automotive Dummy

Industry 5 Beverage Dummy

Industry 6 Commercial service Dummy

Industry 7 Cosmetics and Personal Care Dummy

Industry 8 Engineering and Construction Dummy

Industry 9 Financial services Dummy

Industry 10 Leisure Dummy

Industry 11 Luxury Dummy

Industry 12 Media Dummy

Industry 13 Oil/Gas Dummy

Industry 14 Real Estate Dummy

Industry 15 Restaurants Dummy

Industry 16 Retail Dummy

Industry 17 Technology Dummy

Industry 18 Telecoms Dummy

Industry 19 Transportation Dummy

Industry 20 Utilities Dummy

Note: Notation represents the abbreviated label of a variable.

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Table VI Descriptive statistics
Variable Notation/Description Min Max Mean SD

Consumer engagement

Likes LIKE 0 712,000 2,205.023 18,970.900

Comments COMMENT 0 197,000 546.651 3,864.951

Shares SHARE 0 722,000 2,513.175 20,835.940

Characteristics of short video content (1–

5):

Connection Background Music and 

Brand

CBMB 0 5 3.339 1.404

Connection Background and Brand CBB 0 5 3.176 0.997

Product Relevance PR 0 5 4.475 0.858

Content Credibility CC 2a 5 3.999 0.256

Language Conciseness LC 0 5 3.593 0.508

Story Quality SQ 0 5 1.783 1.815

Excitement Excitement 0 5 1.785 1.877

Joy Joy 0 5 1.579 1.881

Love Love 0 5 0.038 0.393

Pride Pride 0 5 0.439 1.222

Warmth Warmth 0 5 0.335 1.086

Moderator:

Time of day Morning

Afternoon

Evening

2919 c

4065

3256

Controls:

New Follower NF 2.468 11.409 5.538 1.493

Length in Seconds LS 1 2748 83.472 124.479

Content Attractiveness CA 2b 5 3.450 0.551

Endorser Attractiveness EA 0 5 0.865 1.555

First-person Tone FPT 0 1 5560 c 0.498

a. Note: a, b the content contained in each short branded video has a certain credibility and attractiveness, so the 

minimum value is > 0. c the value reports the frequency of morning, afternoon, evening, and first-person tone. 

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5. Validity Checks

5.1. SUR Model

Seemingly uncorrelated regression (SUR) refers to the absence of an internal connection between the 

variables of each equation but a correlation between the disturbance terms. When the same dataset is 

used in different equations, the correlation between disturbance terms is easy to produce, whereas 

SUR allows correlation errors among equations (Shahbaznezhad et al., 2021). Moreover, the lower 

the correlation between the independent variables of equations or the higher the correlation between 

the disturbance terms of equations, the greater the efficiency improvement brought about by the 

feasible generalized least squares estimation of SUR (Tan et al., 2019). The generalized linear model 

is used mainly to resolve the situation in which the residual term does not meet the normal 

distribution, involving a single dependent variable. Given that our final model contains 3 dependent 

variables and 28 independent variables (including interaction effects), referring to the research of 

Shahbaznezhad et al. (2021), we used SUR for the validity test. Table VII shows the results of the 

correlation analysis for the normalized treatment of the dependent variables.

Table VII
Correlation analysis among dependent variables

Norm Likes Norm Comments Norm Shares

Norm Likes 1

Norm Comments 0.795*** 1

Norm Shares 0.339*** 0.314*** 1

（Significance level of significant variables: ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05）

Table VII shows that the numbers of likes, comments, and shares were highly correlated. We 

recommend that future research measure the residual value of each dependent variable in the 

correlation regression model and the correlation between the residuals. Table VIII presents the results 

of the correlation analysis for the residuals of the dependent variables.

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Table VIII
Correlation analysis among the residuals at the 0.01 level

Standardized 

Residual Likes

Standardized Residual 

Comments

Standardized 

Residual Shares

Standardized residual likes 1

Standardized residual comments 0.625*** 1

Standardized residual shares 0.543*** 0.573*** 1

(Significance level of significant variables: ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05)

Table VIII shows that the residuals of the number of likes, comments, and shares were 

significantly correlated. Moreover, the kurtosis values of the dependent variable residuals are very 

high; that is, some residuals are abnormal (see Appendix 4). Combining the correlation between the 

residuals of dependent variables, we used the Breusch–Pagan test of SUR to determine a significant 

relationship between the dependent variables, which also means a meaningful correlation between 

the three equations (see Appendix 5).

5.2. Endogeneity

A possible endogeneity problem in this study comes from measurement errors. Specifically, given 

the error in the measurement of dependent or independent variables, deviations are between 

measured and true values, which lead to the endogeneity problem. In terms of dependent variables, 

our data on consumer engagement are obtained directly from mobile social media using crawler 

technology and have no measurement error. However, the measurement of independent variables, 

namely, indicators of short video content characteristics, could have some deviations. Therefore, we 

conducted a pilot study to determine the characteristic indicators of short video content and used the 

encoded data of two coders to eliminate measurement deviations. 

We invited two coders who were blind to the purpose of the research in advance to code the 

short videos, using a five-point Likert scale. In most studies regarding the measures of characteristics 

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of technology, systems, and platforms (see, e.g., technology acceptance model; Hollebeek and Belk, 

2021), perceived characteristics have been widely used to assess usability, functions, utility, and 

performance. Our four independent variables--content matching, information relevance, storytelling, 

and emotionality--are all perceived characteristics. As absolute objective indicators cannot be used to 

measure these independent variables, the debate over objective or subjective measures pertains to 

accuracy and validity. In this study, the two coders (postgraduates), following two associate 

professors' guidelines, used the criteria suggested by Hayes and Krippendorff (2007) to evaluate the 

four main aspects of video content. Before the coding, the coders had extensive discussions with the 

team members to ensure that everyone had a consistent understanding of the concepts and coding 

standards related to the feature elements of short branded video content, with the goal of high 

accuracy of the manual coding. Thus, the reliability and validity of this study were ensured based on 

a relatively rigorous coding process.

The credibility of the two sets of code data was measured. The overall inter-rater agreement 

percentage was 0.859, and the kappa and tau correlations were 0.767 and 0.82, respectively. 

According to the standard criterion, a kappa of 0.75 is generally regarded as sufficient. Therefore, our 

coded data have strong accuracy and credibility.

6. Main Study Result

We conducted a correlation matrix analysis of all variables. The results are shown in Appendix 6.

6.1. Regression analysis

We used a multiple regression model with categorical variables to test the influence of independent 

variables and a moderator variable on the dependent variables. We used the logarithmic 

transformation of the dependent variables to ensure their approximate normal distribution, which is 

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consistent with existing research (Davis et al., 2019). The independent variables examined in this 

study are the 11 indicators contained in the four dimensions of the characteristics of short video 

content, with a range of variation from 0 to 5. The grouping variables used in this study were binary. 

The short videos release time of day (morning and afternoon) was a moderator and a dummy 

variable. The dependent variables were count variables (Shahbaznezhad et al., 2021). Considering 

the interaction between the independent and moderator variables, the regression model for each 

dependent variable in our study was developed as follows:

𝑌𝑖𝑗 = 𝛼1𝑗𝐶𝐵𝐶𝐵 + 𝛼2𝑗𝐶𝐵𝐵 + 𝛼3𝑗𝑃𝑅 + 𝛼4𝑗𝐶𝐶 + 𝛼5𝑗𝐿𝐶 + 𝛼6𝑗𝑆𝑄 + 𝛼7𝑗𝐿𝑜𝑣𝑒 + 𝛼8𝑗𝑊𝑎𝑟𝑚𝑡ℎ +

            𝛼9𝑗𝐸𝑥𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 + 𝛼10𝑗𝐽𝑜𝑦 + 𝛼11𝑗𝑃𝑟𝑖𝑑𝑒 + 𝛼12𝑗𝑀𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 + 𝛼13𝑗𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑜𝑜𝑛 + 𝛼14𝑗𝑁𝐹 +

            𝛼15𝑗LS + 𝛼16𝑗𝐶𝐴 + 𝛼17𝑗𝐸𝐴 + 𝛼18𝑗𝐹𝑃𝑇 + 𝛼19𝑗𝐿𝑜𝑣𝑒 ∗ 𝑀𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 + 𝛼20𝑗

𝐿𝑜𝑣𝑒 ∗             𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑜𝑜𝑛 + 𝛼21𝑗𝑊𝑎𝑟𝑚𝑡ℎ ∗ 𝑀𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 + 𝛼22𝑗𝑊𝑎𝑟𝑚𝑡ℎ ∗ 𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑜𝑜𝑛 +            𝛼23𝑗

𝐸𝑥𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 ∗ 𝑀𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 + 𝛼24𝑗𝐸𝑥𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 ∗ 𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑜𝑜𝑛 + 𝛼25𝑗𝐽𝑜𝑦 ∗ 𝑀𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 +            𝛼26𝑗

 .   (1)𝐽𝑜𝑦 ∗ 𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑜𝑜𝑛 + 𝛼27𝑗𝑃𝑟𝑖𝑑𝑒 ∗ 𝑀𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 + 𝛼28𝑗𝑃𝑟𝑖𝑑𝑒 ∗ 𝐴𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑜𝑜𝑛 + ε1𝑗

In Equation (1), i represents the index of different independent variable coefficients, and j 

represents the index of the number of likes, comments, or shares.

6.2. Model results

Table IX shows that the four dimensions of short branded video content characteristics significantly 

impacted consumer engagement, and the short videos' time of day effectively moderated the positive 

correlation between emotionality and consumer engagement. We discuss below the following three 

aspects: the impact of the characteristics of short branded video content on consumer engagement, 

the moderating effect of short videos' time of release, and control variables.

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Table IX
Impact of short video content characteristics and the time of day on consumer engagement

likes comments shares

γ SE p γ SE P γ SE p

Independent 

variables:

−0.006 0.009 0.51 −0.008 0.013 0.54 0.018 0.015 0.23 

0.084*** 0.016 0.00 0.109*** 0.023 0.00 0.051* 0.028 0.07 

0.173*** 0.019 0.00 0.254*** 0.027 0.00 0.283*** 0.032 0.00 

−0.177*** 0.057 0.00 −0.227*** 0.082 0.01 −0.213** 0.097 0.03 

0.206*** 0.025 0.00 0.263*** 0.036 0.00 0.269*** 0.042 0.00 

0.078*** 0.007 0.00 0.094*** 0.010 0.00 0.125*** 0.012 0.00 

0.270*** 0.013 0.00 0.275*** 0.019 0.00 0.349*** 0.023 0.00

0.241*** 0.013 0.00 0.217*** 0.018 0.00 0.317*** 0.022 0.00 

0.022 0.057 0.70 0.050 0.081 0.54 −0.015 0.095 0.87 

0.282*** 0.018 0.00 0.193*** 0.026 0.00 0.299*** 0.031 0.00 

0.228*** 0.021 0.00 0.213*** 0.030 0.00 0.264*** 0.035 0.00 

−0.201*** 0.069 0.00 −0.055 0.099 0.58 −0.052 0.117 0.66 

CBMB

CBB

PR

CC

LC

SQ

Excitement

Joy

Love

Pride

Warmth

Morning

Afternoon −0.070 0.063 0.27 0.104 0.091 0.25 0.066 0.106 0.53 

Controls：

−0.140 0.086 0.10 −0.171 0.119 0.15 −0.013 0.117 0.91 

0.00002 0.0001 0.84 0.0002 0.0001 0.05 0.001*** 0.0002 0.00 

0.955*** 0.027 0.00 1.055*** 0.039 0.00 1.238*** 0.046 0.00 

0.375*** 0.009 0.00 0.389*** 0.014 0.00 0.496*** 0.016 0.00 

NF

LS

CA

EA

FPT 0.037 0.026 0.15 −0.039 0.038 0.30 −0.020 0.045 0.66 

Interactions：

0.073*** 0.018 0.00 0.051** 0.026 0.05 0.045 0.030 0.13 

0.047*** 0.017 0.01 0.030 0.024 0.21 0.028 0.029 0.33 

0.100 0.074 0.18 0.105 0.106 0.32 0.155 0.124 0.21 

0.016 0.025 0.52 0.049 0.036 0.17 0.018 0.042 0.67 

0.067** 0.028 0.02 0.014 0.041 0.73 0.080* 0.048 0.10 

0.006 0.017 0.72 −0.064*** 0.024 0.01 −0.020 0.029 0.49 

0.030* 0.016 0.06 0.009 0.023 0.70 −0.010 0.027 0.71 

0.010 0.072 0.89 0.005 0.103 0.96 0.038 0.121 0.75 

−0.073*** 0.024 0.00 −0.062* 0.034 0.07 −0.056 0.040 0.16 

E*M

J*M

L*M

P*M

W*M

E*A

J*A

L*A

P*A

W*A 0.018 0.027 0.51 −0.029 0.038 0.45 0.014 0.045 0.76 

Fixed effects： 　 　 　
−1.728 1.214 0.15 −1.695 1.672 0.31 −2.736* 1.635 0.09 

0.138 1.177 0.91 −0.115 1.622 0.94 −1.177 1.587 0.46 

−1.441 1.079 0.18 −1.312 1.486 0.38 −1.564 1.453 0.28 

−0.471 1.200 0.69 −0.192 1.653 0.91 −0.988 1.617 0.54 

−2.847** 1.272 0.03 −4.335** 1.753 0.01 −3.873** 1.716 0.02 

0.093 1.475 0.95 0.470 2.031 0.82 −0.786 1.983 0.69 

Industry 2

Industry 3

Industry 4

Industry 5

Industry 6

Industry 7

Industry 8 −0.345 1.429 0.81 −0.151 1.969 0.94 −2.216 1.926 0.25 

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−2.792** 1.143 0.01 −2.079 1.574 0.19 −2.183 1.540 0.16 

−0.491 1.208 0.68 −0.991 1.664 0.55 −1.290 1.627 0.43 

0.253 1.150 0.83 −0.140 1.584 0.93 −0.897 1.549 0.56 

−4.880*** 1.628 0.00 −4.849** 2.244 0.03 −6.688*** 2.197 0.00 

−2.484* 1.274 0.05 −3.988** 1.755 0.02 −3.431** 1.719 0.05 

−0.202 1.210 0.87 0.279 1.667 0.87 −0.981 1.630 0.55 

−2.516** 1.131 0.03 −2.212 1.559 0.16 −3.681** 1.525 0.02 

−1.015 1.080 0.35 −0.587 1.488 0.69 −2.095 1.455 0.15 

−0.505 1.231 0.68 0.820 1.696 0.63 −0.435 1.657 0.79 

−1.357 1.640 0.41 1.071 2.260 0.64 −3.324 2.216 0.13 

Industry 9

Industry 10

Industry 11

Industry 13

Industry 14

Industry 15

Industry 16

Industry 17

Industry 18

Industry 19

Industry 20 −3.104** 1.467 0.03 −2.675 2.021 0.19 −2.550 1.977 0.20 

a. Note: *p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01. Industry 12 is media, and there is only one brand (Fox) in our research, 

with only one short video, and the short video does not contain background music, narrative, or other elements; 

therefore it was deleted from the data analysis.

b. Note: connection between background music and brand (CBMB); connection between background and brand 

(CBB); product relevance (PR); content credibility (CC); language conciseness (LC); story quality (SQ); new 

follow (NF); length in seconds (LS); content attractiveness (CA); endorser attractiveness (EA); first-person tone 

(FPT); excitement*morning (E*M); joy*morning (J*M); love*morning (L*M); pride*morning (P*M); 

warmth*morning (W*M); excitement*afternoon (E*A); joy*afternoon (J*A); love*afternoon (L*A); 

pride*afternoon (P*A); warmth* afternoon (W*A).

c. Time of day and industry were dummy variables, and evening and industry 1 were selected as reference groups.

6.3. Impact of short branded video content characteristics on consumer engagement

Through empirical analysis, we also conclude that the characteristics of short branded video content 

positively impacted consumer engagement. Most previous scholars have explored the impact of the 

vividness, interactivity, information, and entertainment of brand content on consumer cognition and 

behavior (Bazi et al., 2020; Demmers et al., 2020; Lin et al., 2019; Schultz, 2017), whereas the 

present study divides the content characteristics of short branded videos into four specific 

dimensions, with 11 indicators, and further analyzes the impact of the content characteristics of short 

branded videos on consumer engagement. 

The results showed that the degree of matching between short video background music and the 

brand or product had no significant impact on consumer engagement (p > 0.10). Ozanne et al. (2019) 

pointed out that likable music can bring pleasure and may stimulate positive beliefs in consumers, 

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which may lead to consumer engagement behaviors. However, the background music in short videos 

is not all likable, and when watching short videos with limited fragmentation time consumers pay 

more attention to the short video content while ignoring the existence of the background music. The 

degree of matching between the short video background and the brand or product had a significant 

positive impact on consumer engagement (p < 0.10), which is consistent with Lee and Labroo's 

finding (2004); specifically, they reveal that background will affect consumers' perceived fluency, 

which in turn affects consumers' attitudes toward branded products. Thus, Hypothesis 1 is partially 

supported. The relevance of the information conveyed by the short video to a brand or product 

positively impacted consumer engagement (p < 0.10). This result is almost consistent with the 

research of Gavilanes et al. (2018). They derived seven content categories for social network 

advertising which are relevant to the brand or product and then confirmed a significant but unequal 

impact of at least four content categories on various engagement metrics. However, the clarity and 

credibility of the short video product and non-product information content negatively impacted 

consumer engagement, probably because of some controversial content, which is more likely to 

attract consumers' attention and lead to more discussion, whereas clearer content is more likely to 

lead consumers to lose interest in further understanding; Hypothesis 2 is partially supported. The 

storytelling of the short branded videos—that is, the conciseness of the short video language and the 

excellent production of the short video stories—had a significant positive impact on consumer 

engagement (p < 0.10), thus supporting Hypothesis 3. This finding is consistent with previous 

researchers' results, that is, concise language description and high-quality narrative more easily gain 

people's attention and promote consumer engagement (Green and Brock, 2000; Atkinson et al., 

2018). The emotionality (warmth, excitement, joy, and pride) of the short branded videos had a 

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significant positive impact on consumer engagement, except for the emotion of love (p > 0.10). This 

result is similar to the finding of Berger and Milkman, who used a unique data set of all New York 

Times articles published over a three-month period to examine how emotion shapes viral 

transmission (Berger and Milkman, 2012). Their research object was articles, whereas the present 

study focused on short videos. Moreover, unlike our study, they do not investigate the emotion of 

love as an individual variable. Possibly, the reason love had no significant effect on consumer 

engagement in our study is that the emotional expression of love is sufficiently strong that consumers 

who become immersed in it ignore the process of participation. Thus, Hypothesis 4 is partially 

supported.

6.4. Moderating effect of the short videos release time of day

The time of day of a short video effectively moderated the impact of emotionality on consumer 

engagement. Overall, the interaction between emotionality and the morning was stronger than that 

between emotionality and the afternoon. The impact of the interaction of warmth, excitement, joy, 

and time of day on consumer engagement supports our hypothesis. That is, the interaction of a short 

video released in the morning with warmth, excitement, and joy had a significant positive impact on 

consumers' likes, whereas a short video released in the afternoon interacted only with joy, with a 

positive effect on likes. The reason may be that with the gradual depletion of individual resources 

throughout the day, consumers increase their preference for simplified processing and reliance on 

reference selection (Pocheptsova et al., 2009). Accordingly, the emotional expression of warmth and 

excitement may not be able to arouse consumers' responses, but joy may be able to attract consumers' 

attention through a happy atmosphere, thereby promoting consumers' likes. Moreover, the interaction 

between the time of day and warmth and joy had no significant impact on consumers' comments, 

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whereas the interaction between short videos released in the morning and excitement positively 

impacted their comments; and the interaction between short videos released in the afternoon and 

excitement had a significant negative impact on their comments. A possible reason is that the 

emotions of warmth and joy are softer, and their impact on consumers' comments does not change 

over time. However, excitement can cause a drastic change in emotion, and its interaction with time 

significantly impacts consumers' comments. The interaction between the time of day and excitement 

and joy had no significant impact on consumers' shares, whereas the interaction between short videos 

released in the morning and warmth positively impacted shares. We believe that positive emotional 

expression always makes consumers generate a desire to share with others, which does not change 

over time. Therefore, we suggest that short branded videos should contain more positive emotions of 

warmth, excitement, and joy and be published in the morning as much as possible to promote 

consumers' engagement.

Similar to the research on the impact of emotionality on consumer engagement, the interaction 

between the short videos' release time of day and love had no significant impact on consumer 

engagement (p > 0.10), suggesting that the strong emotional expression of love may immerse 

consumers at any time. Moreover, the interaction between the short videos released in the morning 

and pride had no significant impact on consumer engagement (p > 0.10); however, the interaction 

between the short videos released in the afternoon and pride had a significant negative impact on 

consumers' likes and comments (p < 0.10), but no significant impact on consumers' shares (p > 0.10). 

A possible reason is that pride contains conceited emotional expressions and, according to the 

resource exhaustion theory, consumers may feel disdainful in response. Thus, we suggest that brand 

owners should avoid including pride when publishing short videos in the afternoon to reduce 

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consumers' negative reactions.

6.5. Control variables

Other content elements of short branded videos may generate consumer engagement. Our results 

show that the number of fans of the brand and first-person tones in the short video have no significant 

impact on consumer engagement (p > 0.10). The video’s duration had no significant impact on 

consumers' likes and comments (p > 0.10) but significantly impacted consumers' shares (p < 0.01); 

longer duration enhanced consumers' willingness to share. In addition, the attractiveness of short 

video content and endorsements of short videos effectively increased consumer engagement (p < 

0.01). Furthermore, by including industry fixed effects we showed that compared with the aerospace 

industry as the baseline, commercial services, financial services, oil and gas, real estate, retail, and 

utilities negatively impacted consumers' likes. Correspondingly, commercial services, oil and gas, 

and real estate negatively impacted consumers' comments; and commercial services, oil and gas, real 

estate, and retail negatively impacted consumers' shares.

7. Conclusions

This study presents the impact of short branded video content characteristics and short videos' release 

time of day on consumer engagement in social media. We divided the characteristics of short branded 

video content into four dimensions (content matching, information relevance, storytelling, and 

emotionality) and verified the research model and hypotheses based on data obtained from Weibo. 

The results show a significant positive correlation between the selected characteristics of short 

branded video content and consumer engagement. Moreover, we found that the short videos' release 

time of day significantly moderated the positive correlation between the positive emotions of short 

videos (e.g., warmth, excitement, and joy) and consumer engagement. In other words, compared with 

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an afternoon short video content release, a morning release appears to better promote the positive 

impact of warmth, excitement, and joy on consumer engagement, which is a finding that refines the 

relevant research of Kanuri et al. (2018).

7.1. Theoretical implications

This study combed existing research on consumer engagement and short video content 

characteristics, used short branded videos on the Weibo social media platform as research objects, 

and determined the variables that best represent consumer engagement--namely, likes, comments, 

and shares. We constructed a conceptual research model that combined theories of fluency, narrative 

transmission, and emotional contagion and used crawling, coding, and other methods to obtain data 

on the content characteristics of short branded videos, the time of day videos were released, and 

consumer engagement. 

    This study contributes to the field of online marketing in the following three ways. First, most 

studies related to factors that influence consumer engagement focus on textual and pictorial 

information, such as advertisement types and post features, while studies on short video content are 

relatively few. This study uses short branded videos on social media platforms as the research object 

and enriches theories of content marketing by employing a broader brand perspective.

Second, we organized the research framework based on previous research (Dall'Olio and 

Vakratsas, 2022), namely, following the paths of content and execution. In our research, content 

focuses on the independent variables of information relevance and emotionality, and execution 

focuses on content matching and storytelling. While previous research analyzed only the content of 

products, based on sales volume and marketing-mix activities, we have expanded previous research 

by investigating both content and execution in brand advertisement. Through crawling and coding we 

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identified four dimensions of short brand video characteristics and their effects on consumer 

engagement (likes, comments, and shares), thus contributing to the literature on short video content 

and consumer engagement and further expanding the content marketing theory and visual marketing 

theory.

Finally, this study explored the impact of the interaction between the time of day of short 

branded videos release and the emotionality of short branded videos on consumer engagement. In a 

fast-paced life, consumers are unable to browse short videos at any time and in any place, and some 

short videos may be ignored and/or miss wide dissemination because of the time in which they are 

released. By including the release time of day, we have captured the time periods when short videos 

may have the best effects. This result provides a reference for other researchers to further explore this 

field.

7.2. Managerial implications

Our suggestions for how businesses produce short videos include creating a comfortable atmosphere 

for consumers and selecting a background that matches the target product. Irrelevant information 

should be avoided as much as possible because it can easily divert consumers' attention, thereby 

weakening their awareness of the product. Focusing on the authenticity and credibility of the content 

can make consumers feel good about the brand and its products, while false information is known to 

mislead consumers and bring unbearable consequences for the brand (e.g., the Sanlu-contaminated 

milk scandal). Consumers are often unwilling to receive complex and redundant information. Thus, a 

simple description may produce a cordial feeling and help them to capture key information and form 

a deep impression easily. Elaborating stories is a way to attract consumers' attention and resonate 

with them, and positive emotions (e.g., warmth, excitement, joy, and pride) are likely to arouse 

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consumers' interest.

The release time of short videos is also very important. Except for special times (e.g., 

just-in-time hotspots, a memorable moment), enterprises should try their best to release short videos 

before noon. Given that release in the morning can enhance the positive impact of positive emotions, 

such as warmth, excitement, and joy, on consumer engagement and bring more consumer 

engagement, more potential consumers may be exposed to the short video content, leading to the best 

dissemination effect.

7.3 Limitations and future research

The current study makes significant contributions but also has certain limitations. First, we focused 

exclusively on Weibo, among the many social media platforms, and the research results may not 

adequately explain consumer engagement on other platforms, such as TikTok. Future research could 

extend the investigation of the impact of short video content on consumer engagement to more social 

media platforms. Second, short branded video advertisements tend to convey positive emotions, 

which limited our study of the relationship between a fuller range of emotions and consumer 

engagement. Examining the impact of negative emotions may be an interesting research direction. 

Third, we chose the short videos release time of day as the moderator variable. Future research 

should explore other moderating variables, for example, the existence of a brand logo, consumers' 

loyalty and familiarity with a brand, characters in short videos, and the duration of a short video may 

also affect the relationship between the characteristics of short video content and consumer 

engagement.

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