From scroll to sale: Predicting of customer engagement in impulse buying cycle on TikTok through the S-O-R model

The popularity of TikTok is evident on a global scale, leading to its adoption by numerous companies as a promotional platform. The Stimulus - Organization - Reaction model has been validated in its capacity to describe the purchase process. The present study investigates the Hungarian manifestations of the factors of this model to develop a forecasting method that will allow for prediction of the success of TikTok impulse purchase marketing strategies. The prediction method under analysis is based on factor and regression analyses and validation. The exploratory part utilizes a questionnaire survey of 283 Hungarian university students. The validity of the results is measured on a different university sample of 104 active users of TikTok and users of alternative social media platforms. The findings indicate that the factors comprising the impulse purchase cycle involvement include the urge to buy impulsively, utilitarian value, perceived similarity, and co-promotion. The validation process revealed that the rates of agreement with the predictions among TikTok users exceeded 90 %, while the rate among users of other social media platforms reached over 80 %. The principal strength of this study lies in its quantification and transformation of questionnaire data into a pivotal key performance indicator suitable for companies.