PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

Impulse buying on social media platforms has become a defining feature of the digital commerce landscape, particularly in visually immersive and socially interactive environments like Weibo. With over 600 million active users, Weibo merges entertainment, peer influence, and algorithmic recommendations, creating conditions ripe for unplanned consumer purchases. Despite its growing importance, the psychological mechanisms behind impulse buying intention in such contexts remain underexplored. This study investigates how five key marketing stimuli—promotion, visual appeal, positive user reviews, product features, and price—influence consumers’ impulse buying intention on Weibo, with emotional arousal examined as a mediating factor. Drawing on responses from 400 Chinese Weibo users, the study finds that visual appeal and price have a direct and significant influence on impulse buying intention, while promotion, user reviews, and product features affect behavior indirectly through emotional arousal. Arousal emerged as the strongest overall predictor of unplanned purchase intentions. These findings carry important implications for practitioners. Marketers should prioritize emotionally resonant content, especially visually engaging formats and value-driven messaging, to effectively stimulate impulse buying. Rather than relying solely on discounts or product descriptions, strategies that evoke excitement, urgency, and visual impact are more likely to influence consumer behavior on fast-moving platforms like Weibo. The results offer actionable insights for content creators, brand managers, and digital strategists seeking to optimize social commerce engagement by aligning marketing stimuli with consumers’ emotional triggers.