Marketing Touchpoints and Consumer Purchase Intention on Douyin: A Comparison of Mass-Market and Luxury Cosmetic Brands

Social commerce, specifically short videos, now form the backbone of short video conversion in the beauty sector in China, but brands don't have any evidence to base differentiated touchpoint allocation on different levels of brands. This study ranks the three main marketing touchpoints of Douyin according to 328 valid consumer surveys to analyses the uneven influence of the three marketing touchpoints on consumers' purchase intention. Results support that three touchpoints have a significant positive effect on purchase intention, and that influencer seeding has the significant effect on the margin. There is a clear moderating effect: influencer seeding and feed ads work well in terms of conversions for mass cosmetics, but only official brand live streaming can be effective for luxury brands. This paper offers an understanding of this heterogeneity by explaining it through three interacting mechanisms, and suggests a three-level resource allocation framework, based on the elaboration likelihood model and cultural capital theory.