How Shoppable Video Clips Convert Views to Clicks
(A2025-125764)

AUTHORS

Christopher Schraml, University of St.Gallen; Keyvan Dehmamy, Goethe University Frankfurt; Djordje Djokovic, University of St.Gallen; Dhruv Grewal, Babson College; Thomas Rudolph, University of St. Gallen, Institute of Retail Management

ABSTRACT

Shoppable Video Clips (SVCs), a novel short-video format integrated into e-commerce websites, enable interactive shopping by presenting products alongside clickable product tags. This study investigates the impact of product presentation styles in SVCs—showing products in use versus displaying them—on purchase-related behavior. Drawing on economic theories of consumer information search, we suggest that SVCs showing products in use reduce information search costs, leading to higher add-to-cart rates. Using advanced machine learning methods to analyze thousands of SVCs from a European beauty retailer, we find that showing products in use increases add-to-cart rates significantly, particularly for experience products and strong brands. Moreover, SVCs showing products in use placed in upper-funnel stages, like video feeds, outperform those in lower-funnel stages, such as product detail pages. We discuss theoretical and practical implications and propose avenues for future research.