An Empirical Study on Online Impulse Buying Behaviour in Short-Form Video Shopping Platforms in Malaysia

Lee, Jia Yi (2025) An Empirical Study on Online Impulse Buying Behaviour in Short-Form Video Shopping Platforms in Malaysia. Masters thesis, Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology.

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Abstract

With the rapid advancement of the internet, short-form video shopping platforms such as TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Facebook Shorts and Douyin have significantly transformed online shopping by offering immersive and personalised content that encourages impulsive buying. These platforms are known as a form of mobile e-commerce, enabling customers to vividly experience product features through dynamic video content. Businesses have increasingly paid attention to and leverage short-video platforms in marketing due to their short nature and ability to stimulate immediate, emotional and unplanned purchasing behaviour. However, there remains limited research on online impulse buying behaviour in the Malaysian context, especially regarding the key psychological and technological factors. Moreover, the paradox between personalisation benefits and privacy concerns has not been thoroughly studied and addressed in this context. Therefore, this research aims to examine how different theories, including the Personalisation-Privacy Paradox (PPP), Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), and Flow Theory extend and relate to one another to affect online impulse buying behaviour. This study investigates both direct and indirect effects including simple mediation, parallel mediation, simple moderation and moderated mediation relationships among personalisation, privacy concerns, flow experience, trust, perceived usefulness, and fear of missing out on online impulse buying behaviour. To achieve the research objectives, data was collected from 415 responses through the online self-administered questionnaire survey and further analysed the data by using IBM SPSS and SmartPLS PLS-SEM software. The results show that 20 out of 21 relationships are statistically supported The research findings offer both theoretical and managerial implications by identifying key antecedents influencing online impulse buying behaviour. By examining multiple mediating and moderating relationships, the study enriches the understanding of the interconnections among the determinants whether direct or indirect. Finally, the current research will be concluded by highlighting limitations and recommendations for future research to further exploring customer behaviour in these rapidly evolving platforms. Keywords: Personalisation-Privacy Paradox (PPP), Flow Experience, Perceived Usefulness (PU), Fear of Missing Out (FoMO), Online Impulse Buying Behaviour (OIBB).