The Impact of Chapter Progress Bars on Purchase Intention in Video-Based Influencer Marketing: Consumer Impatience Perspective

The rise of social media has transformed consumer experience in service innovation, particularly in video-based influencer marketing. This study investigates the unintended consequences of chapter progress bars—a widely used interface feature intended to facilitate video navigation—on consumer engagement. Although designed to enhance user experience, progress bars may inadvertently heighten consumer impatience and, in turn, reduce purchase intention. Across five studies, including large-scale behavioral analysis of more than 181,500 real-time user comments and a series of controlled experiments, results show that chapter progress bars increase consumer impatience and lower purchase intention. Furthermore, impatience mediates this relationship, and the effect is moderated by efficiency goals; consumers with stronger efficiency orientations are more sensitive to segmentation cues and exhibit greater impatience and lower engagement, whereas those with lower efficiency orientations are largely unaffected. This research extends the literatures on influencer marketing, consumer impatience, and digital service design by demonstrating how interface features shape consumer psychology and purchase intention. The findings offer practical insights for creators and platform designers, emphasizing the need to balance navigation efficiency with sustained consumer purchase intention in digital content strategies. Funding: Z. Zhang was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 71972043]. X. Fan was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72572040]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/serv.2024.0172 .