Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have enabled personalized recommendation services to be applied across various industries. In the beauty sector, AI-based recommendation content delivered through short-form platforms such as TikTok, Ins...
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have enabled personalized recommendation services to be applied across various industries. In the beauty sector, AI-based recommendation content delivered through short-form platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts has emerged as an important marketing approach. However, prior studies have largely focused on AI technology itself or on service-level functions, leaving a lack of empirical evidence on how AI-based beauty product recommendation short-form content leads to consumers’ perceived value, satisfaction, and behavioral responses. Accordingly, this study aimed to structurally examine the effects of the technical characteristics of AI-based beauty product recommendation short-form content (recency, reliability, and shareability) on cognitive characteristics (convenience and usefulness), emotional responses (satisfaction), and behavioral outcomes (repurchase intention), and to analyze differences in consumer perceptions according to levels of functional value and economic value.
To achieve these objectives, the study targeted consumers who had watched AI-based beauty product recommendation short-form content and had purchased the recommended product. A survey was conducted with 400 respondents, and the proposed research model was tested using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), structural equation modeling (SEM), and multi-group analysis (MGA). The results showed that recency and shareability had significant positive effects on convenience, while reliability and convenience were identified as factors that enhanced consumers’ perceptions of usefulness. In addition, usefulness had a significant positive effect on satisfaction, and satisfaction was confirmed as a key pathway that significantly influenced repurchase intention. In contrast, recency did not have a direct effect on satisfaction or repurchase intention. Notably, convenience exhibited a significant negative direct effect on satisfaction, indicating that ease of access to content may not necessarily translate into immediate positive emotional responses. This finding suggests that in an AI-based short-form content environment, where automated recommendations, rapid information acquisition, and a structure that delivers core information within a short time have become normalized, convenience may be perceived not as a differentiating advantage but as a basic attribute, and therefore may be less likely to function as a factor that enhances satisfaction.
The multi-group analysis further revealed differences in content-evaluation pathways depending on functional and economic value levels. Consumers who emphasized functional value showed relatively stronger effects along the pathways from technical characteristics to convenience and usefulness, whereas consumers who emphasized economic value exhibited a clearer flow centered on convenience, leading to usefulness, satisfaction, and repurchase intention. These findings suggest that even when exposed to the same AI-based beauty product recommendation short-form content, consumers’ cognitive structures and behavioral pathways may be formed differently depending on their value orientation.
This study is meaningful in that it provides foundational evidence for AI-driven personalized marketing strategies and consumer-experience-oriented, customized product development in the beauty industry by integrating and examining the technical, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral factors related to AI-based beauty product recommendation short-form content.