User marketing information sharing plays a significant role in boosting the effectiveness of short video marketing. Exploring the factors influencing the willingness to share has become a meaningful way to improve the dissemination of marketing information. This study examines how the characteristics of short video platforms affect users’ willingness to share marketing information and investigates the mediating role of users’ flow experience. We adopted qualitative and quantitative analyses to explore the issue. Twelve participants were recruited to conduct the online interviews and 306 valid data points on users’ willingness to share marketing information were obtained through a questionnaire. The study was conducted using structural equation modelling (SEM) and mediating effect tests. The interviews verified that the information quality, the service quality, and the system quality are essential characteristics of a well-established short video platform. The results of the empirical analysis showed that the information and the service and system quality of short video platforms have a positive impact on users’ willingness to share marketing information through perceived control and pleasure, respectively. The effect of information quality on users’ desire to share marketing information is the strongest. This study provides a reference for short video platforms to optimize and improve their marketing effectiveness.

As a booming branch of online retailing, live-streaming e-commerce can present abundant information dimensions and diverse forms of expression. Live-streaming e-commerce has enabled online retailers to interact with customers face-to-face, resulting in widespread instances of emotional and impulse buying behavior. Prior research in live-streaming e-commerce has suggested that live streamers’ characteristics, especially the live streamer’s face, can affect customers’ purchase intentions. The present research used questionnaire surveys and an eye tracking experiment to investigate the impact of live streamer’s facial attractiveness on consumer purchase intention for search-based and experience-based products. The questionnaire survey analyzed 309 valid questionnaires and revealed that attractive faces are the key influencing factor driving consumers’ impulse purchase intentions. Moreover, consumers’ emotional experience plays a partial mediating role in the process of live streamers’ faces influencing purchase intention. The eye tracking experiment further explored the mechanism of a live streamer’s facial attractiveness on consumers’ purchase intentions of search-based products and experience-based products from the perspective of visual attention by analyzing 64 valid sets of data. The results showed that attractive faces attract more consumers’ attention and, therefore, increase their purchase intention. Furthermore, there is a significant interaction between product type, the live streamer’s facial attractiveness, and consumers’ purchase intentions. In the case of unattractive live streamers, consumers are more likely to buy search-based products than experience-based products, while the purchase intention does not vary between search-based products and experience-based products in the case of attractive live streamers. The present study provides evidence for ‘beauty premium’ in live-streaming e-commerce and sheds light on the design of the match between live streamers and different types of products.