Abstract
Short-drama commerce has become a central form of platform content commercialization, yet little is known about how products acquire meaning inside narrative content. Drawing on a narrative affordance perspective, this study develops product-plot fit, defined as the extent to which a product serves a character's need, resolves a conflict, completes a narrative task, or enables a plot reversal. Study 1 combines manual coding of 200 Douyin short-drama commerce videos with publicly observable engagement metrics. Product-plot fit is not positively associated with visible platform engagement, indicating that likes, comments, saves, and shares may capture entertainment, conflict, brand exposure, and distribution dynamics rather than persuasion alone. Study 2 uses a controlled experiment to test the consumer-level mechanism. High product-plot fit increases perceived diagnosticity and ad naturalness, lowers advertising resistance, and improves product attitude and purchase intention. Positive indirect effects through perceived diagnosticity were observed for product attitude and purchase intention. The study contributes to content commercialization research by theorizing product-plot fit as a narrative condition for product meaning-making and by separating platform-visible engagement from consumer-level persuasion.
Recommended Citation
Zuo, You You; Zhou, Jiayi; and Wang, Luyao, "Product-Plot Fit in Short-Drama Commerce: A Narrative Affordance Perspective on Platform Engagement and Consumer Judgment" (2026). ICEB 2026 Proceedings (Beijing, China). 65.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/iceb2026/65