Understand the Impact of Livestreaming, Flash Sale, Free Shipping, and Influencer Marketing among Generation Z on TikTok Shop, with Positive Emotions as a Mediating Role

Chong, Eunice Kai Xin (2025) Understand the Impact of Livestreaming, Flash Sale, Free Shipping, and Influencer Marketing among Generation Z on TikTok Shop, with Positive Emotions as a Mediating Role. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology.

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Abstract

E-commerce experienced a dramatic surge when the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, as it emerged as a potential alternative to traditional commerce. With the rise of e-commerce and social media, the integration of both has given rise to social commerce, an emerging model where users can make purchases directly within the social media application. Online shopping has been recognized as a catalyst for impulse buying behavior, yet there remains a gap in understanding how specific marketing strategies shape these tendencies. There is a gap in understanding how the marketing approaches that influence consumers' impulse buying tendencies are therefore critical. This research focuses on Malaysian Generation Z consumers, who favor social commerce as their primary shopping method and are highly influenced by advertising, peer recommendations, and trendy products, making them prone to impulse buying. To address this, the study examines livestreaming, flash sales, free shipping, and influencer marketing on TikTok Shop, a leading social commerce platform among Generation Z in Malaysia. This study adopts an inclusive research model rooted in the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) Theory to explore the relationship between strategies and the mechanisms leading to impulse buying. Moreover, it extends the traditional Stimulus-Response (SR) Theory by incorporating the organism element, with positive emotions as the mediating variable. This quantitative study was conducted through an online survey and collected a total of 100 respondents, targeting young consumers between 13 and 28 years old in Malaysia. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS to determine the relationships between the study variables and impulse buying, with positive emotions examined as a mediating variable. SmartPLS was also applied to test the structural model and mediation effects. The SmartPLS analysis further confirms the hypothesised model. The findings suggest that flash sales and influencer marketing have a significant and positive effect on impulse buying among Malaysian Generation Z consumers, while livestreaming and free shipping promotions do not demonstrate a significant influence. In addition, positive emotions partially mediate the relationships between flash sales and impulse buying, as well as between influencer marketing and impulse buying, which indicates that these strategies are practical and effective because they stimulate positive emotions that encourage impulse buying behavior. On the other hand, livestreaming and free shipping do not have significant direct effects on impulse buying, nor are their effects mediated by positive emotions, suggesting that these strategies are ineffective in stimulating impulsive purchasing behaviour within this context. The present study contributes to the literature on social commerce and consumer behavior. The findings provide guidance for marketers to design campaigns using strategies proven to be effective, while also generating positive emotions to create an enjoyable consumer experience, ultimately boosting spending on the TikTok Shop platform