{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,9]],"date-time":"2026-09-09T13:09:40Z","timestamp":1788959380043,"version":"build-2803163510"},"reference-count":49,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"9","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,9]],"date-time":"2026-09-09T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1788912000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Behav. Sci.","Behavioral Sciences"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Research on social commerce, influencer marketing, consumer\u2013brand engagement, and CEO social media communication has rapidly expanded. However, less is known regarding how entrepreneurial leaders\u2019 personal short-video accounts operate as platformized interfaces that organize consumer interaction. This study examines how CEO short-video communication produces an observable, collectively sustained commercial persona and connects executive visibility with fan labor, consumer\u2013brand engagement, and consumption imagination. Using the Douyin account of a leading Chinese technology entrepreneur as a case, this study analyzes 372 short videos posted up to 15 August 2024, and 185,561 valid first-level comments. It combines structured content analysis, intercoder reliability testing, BERTopic-assisted topic location, manual thematic validation, and text-based emotional intensity analysis. Work footage, scenes of everyday life, casual presentations, and product props translate entrepreneurial authority into an approachable, platformized commercial persona. In comment sections, users perform informational, relational, affective, memetic, mobilizing, and defensive labor through product requests, familiar address, emotional identification, memes, consumption mobilization, and brand defense. These practices stabilize CEO personas, circulate product meanings, and create consumption imagination, understood as public projections of saving for, ordering, using, or affiliating with products rather than evidence of actual purchases. Emotional identification, consumption mobilization, and brand defense display higher observable emotional intensity than product requests. This study contributes a case-derived conceptual framework demonstrating how CEO identity capital, platform affordances, fan labor, and product-centered imagination are assembled in short-video social commerce.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/bs16091607","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,9]],"date-time":"2026-09-09T12:26:11Z","timestamp":1788956771000},"page":"1607","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["The Platformized Commercial Persona: CEO Visibility, Fan Labor, and Consumer Engagement in Short-Video Social Commerce"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"16","author":[{"given":"Hongbo","family":"Liao","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Journalism, Communication University of China, Beijing 100024, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"},{"role":"conceptualization","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"methodology","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"validation","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"formal-analysis","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"investigation","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"data-curation","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"writing-original-draft","vocabulary":"credit"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0007-4939-6586","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jiangmin","family":"Ding","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Business, Pusan National University, Busan 46241, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"},{"role":"conceptualization","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"methodology","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"validation","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"writing-review-editing","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"supervision","vocabulary":"credit"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,9]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1379","DOI":"10.5267\/j.ijdns.2024.4.005","article-title":"Short video marketing and consumer engagement: Mediation effect of social sharing","volume":"8","author":"Alghizzawi","year":"2024","journal-title":"International Journal of Data and Network Science"},{"key":"ref_2","unstructured":"Papacharissi, Z. (2010). Social network sites as networked publics: Affordances, dynamics, and implications. A networked self: Identity, community, and culture on social network sites, Routledge."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"105","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jbusres.2011.07.029","article-title":"Consumer engagement in a virtual brand community: An exploratory analysis","volume":"66","author":"Brodie","year":"2013","journal-title":"Journal of Business Research"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1164","DOI":"10.1177\/1461444812440159","article-title":"Want to be on the top? Algorithmic power and the threat of invisibility on Facebook","volume":"14","author":"Bucher","year":"2012","journal-title":"New Media & Society"},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Burgess, J., Marwick, A., and Poell, T. (2018). The affordances of social media platforms. The SAGE handbook of social media, SAGE.","DOI":"10.4135\/9781473984066"},{"key":"ref_6","unstructured":"China Internet Network Information Center (2025). The 55th statistical report on China\u2019s Internet development."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"37","DOI":"10.1177\/001316446002000104","article-title":"A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales","volume":"20","author":"Cohen","year":"1960","journal-title":"Educational and Psychological Measurement"},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Collins, R. (2004). Interaction ritual chains, Princeton University Press.","DOI":"10.1515\/9781400851744"},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"30","DOI":"10.1108\/CCIJ-05-2022-0055","article-title":"People want to see people? Personalization on Facebook as a tool for corporate communications","volume":"28","author":"Denner","year":"2023","journal-title":"Corporate Communications: An International Journal"},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"798","DOI":"10.1080\/02650487.2017.1348035","article-title":"Marketing through Instagram influencers: The impact of number of followers and product divergence on brand attitude","volume":"36","author":"Cauberghe","year":"2017","journal-title":"International Journal of Advertising"},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ding, J., and Lee, E. S. (2024). Promoting consumers\u2019 sustainable consumption of online retail cold chain logistics services: Extended applications of SOR and cognitive-affective-conative theories. Behavioral Sciences, 14, (9).","DOI":"10.3390\/bs14090771"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1104","DOI":"10.1108\/INTR-02-2022-0121","article-title":"Short video marketing: What, when and how short-branded videos facilitate consumer engagement","volume":"34","author":"Dong","year":"2024","journal-title":"Internet Research"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"285","DOI":"10.1177\/01634437221111923","article-title":"Platform governance at the margins: Social media creators\u2019 experiences with algorithmic (in)visibility","volume":"45","author":"Duffy","year":"2023","journal-title":"Media, Culture & Society"},{"key":"ref_14","unstructured":"Fields, K. E. (1995). The elementary forms of religious life, Free Press. (Original work published 1912)."},{"key":"ref_15","unstructured":"Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life, Anchor Books."},{"key":"ref_16","unstructured":"Grootendorst, M. (2022). BERTopic: Neural topic modeling with a class-based TF-IDF procedure. arXiv."},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1235","DOI":"10.1007\/s10660-022-09651-8","article-title":"A study on the influence of the characteristics of key opinion leaders on consumers\u2019 purchase intention in live streaming commerce: Based on dual-systems theory","volume":"24","author":"He","year":"2024","journal-title":"Electronic Commerce Research"},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"149","DOI":"10.1016\/j.intmar.2013.12.002","article-title":"Consumer brand engagement in social media: Conceptualization, scale development and validation","volume":"28","author":"Hollebeek","year":"2014","journal-title":"Journal of Interactive Marketing"},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"215","DOI":"10.1080\/00332747.1956.11023049","article-title":"Mass communication and para-social interaction: Observations on intimacy at a distance","volume":"19","author":"Horton","year":"1956","journal-title":"Psychiatry"},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"327","DOI":"10.1080\/02650487.2020.1836925","article-title":"The commercialization of social media stars: A literature review and conceptual framework on the strategic use of social media influencers","volume":"40","author":"Hudders","year":"2021","journal-title":"International Journal of Advertising"},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"191","DOI":"10.1080\/19392397.2016.1218292","article-title":"Self-branding, \u2018micro-celebrity\u2019 and the rise of social media influencers","volume":"8","author":"Khamis","year":"2017","journal-title":"Celebrity Studies"},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"905","DOI":"10.1002\/mar.21244","article-title":"The mechanism by which social media influencers persuade consumers: The role of consumers\u2019 desire to mimic","volume":"36","author":"Ki","year":"2019","journal-title":"Psychology & Marketing"},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Krippendorff, K. (2019). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology, SAGE. [4th ed.].","DOI":"10.4135\/9781071878781"},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"134","DOI":"10.1016\/j.intmar.2013.12.003","article-title":"Fostering consumer-brand relationships in social media environments: The role of parasocial interaction","volume":"28","author":"Labrecque","year":"2014","journal-title":"Journal of Interactive Marketing"},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1158","DOI":"10.1108\/INTR-05-2024-0705","article-title":"The value of CEO communication on social media for internal relationship management and employees\u2019 social media engagement","volume":"36","author":"Lee","year":"2026","journal-title":"Internet Research"},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"93","DOI":"10.1177\/00222429221102889","article-title":"Influencer marketing effectiveness","volume":"86","author":"Leung","year":"2022","journal-title":"Journal of Marketing"},{"key":"ref_27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"58","DOI":"10.1080\/15252019.2018.1533501","article-title":"Influencer marketing: How message value and credibility affect consumer trust of branded content on social media","volume":"19","author":"Lou","year":"2019","journal-title":"Journal of Interactive Advertising"},{"key":"ref_28","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"16605","DOI":"10.1038\/s41598-025-94994-z","article-title":"Influence of short video content on consumers purchase intentions on social media platforms with trust as a mediator","volume":"15","author":"Luo","year":"2025","journal-title":"Scientific Reports"},{"key":"ref_29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"205","DOI":"10.21105\/joss.00205","article-title":"hdbscan: Hierarchical density based clustering","volume":"2","author":"McInnes","year":"2017","journal-title":"Journal of Open Source Software"},{"key":"ref_30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"McInnes, L., Healy, J., and Melville, J. (2018). UMAP: Uniform manifold approximation and projection for dimension reduction. arXiv.","DOI":"10.21105\/joss.00861"},{"key":"ref_31","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"932","DOI":"10.1016\/j.pubrev.2016.08.001","article-title":"Public engagement with CEOs on social media: Motivations and relational outcomes","volume":"42","author":"Men","year":"2016","journal-title":"Public Relations Review"},{"key":"ref_32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2123","DOI":"10.1111\/joms.13279","article-title":"The power of posting: An examination of CEO social media celebrity","volume":"63","author":"Mooney","year":"2026","journal-title":"Journal of Management Studies"},{"key":"ref_33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.21153\/ps2017vol3no1art658","article-title":"Five dimensions of online persona","volume":"3","author":"Moore","year":"2017","journal-title":"Persona Studies"},{"key":"ref_34","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"442","DOI":"10.1086\/497556","article-title":"Fluency of consumption imagery and the backfire effects of imagery appeals","volume":"32","author":"Petrova","year":"2005","journal-title":"Journal of Consumer Research"},{"key":"ref_35","first-page":"280","article-title":"Consumption visions in consumer decision making","volume":"22","author":"Phillips","year":"1995","journal-title":"Advances in Consumer Research"},{"key":"ref_36","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Reimers, N., and Gurevych, I. (2019). Sentence-BERT: Sentence embeddings using Siamese BERT-networks. Proceedings of the 2019 conference on empirical methods in natural language processing and the 9th international joint conference on natural language processing, Association for Computational Linguistics.","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/D19-1410"},{"key":"ref_37","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"zmad040","DOI":"10.1093\/jcmc\/zmad040","article-title":"The value affordances of social media engagement features","volume":"28","author":"Scharlach","year":"2023","journal-title":"Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication"},{"key":"ref_38","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1568","DOI":"10.1177\/01634437221144562","article-title":"Understanding the popularity and affordances of TikTok through user experiences","volume":"45","author":"Schellewald","year":"2023","journal-title":"Media, Culture & Society"},{"key":"ref_39","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"184","DOI":"10.1086\/376807","article-title":"Experiencing products in the virtual world: The role of goal and imagery in influencing attitudes versus purchase intentions","volume":"30","author":"Schlosser","year":"2003","journal-title":"Journal of Consumer Research"},{"key":"ref_40","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1177\/21582440231219096","article-title":"Platform or content strategy? Exploring engagement with social media brand posts","volume":"13","author":"Shen","year":"2023","journal-title":"SAGE Open"},{"key":"ref_41","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"101742","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jretconser.2019.01.011","article-title":"Instagram and YouTube bloggers promote it, why should I buy? How credibility and parasocial interaction influence purchase intentions","volume":"53","author":"Sokolova","year":"2020","journal-title":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services"},{"key":"ref_42","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Stanfill, M., and Condis, M. (2014). Fandom and\/as labor. Transformative Works and Cultures, 15.","DOI":"10.3983\/twc.2014.0593"},{"key":"ref_43","unstructured":"Metzger, M. J., and Flanagin, A. J. (2008). The MAIN model: A heuristic approach to understanding technology effects on credibility. Digital media, youth, and credibility, MIT Press."},{"key":"ref_44","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"24","DOI":"10.1177\/0261927X09351676","article-title":"The psychological meaning of words: LIWC and computerized text analysis methods","volume":"29","author":"Tausczik","year":"2010","journal-title":"Journal of Language and Social Psychology"},{"key":"ref_45","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"33","DOI":"10.1215\/01642472-18-2_63-33","article-title":"Free labor: Producing culture for the digital economy","volume":"18","author":"Terranova","year":"2000","journal-title":"Social Text"},{"key":"ref_46","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Tran, K. V., and Uehara, T. (2023). The influence of key opinion leaders on consumers\u2019 purchasing intention regarding green fashion products. Frontiers in Communication, 8.","DOI":"10.3389\/fcomm.2023.1296174"},{"key":"ref_47","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"143","DOI":"10.1080\/23808985.2013.11679130","article-title":"Social media use in organizations: Exploring the affordances of visibility, editability, persistence, and association","volume":"36","author":"Treem","year":"2013","journal-title":"Annals of the International Communication Association"},{"key":"ref_48","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2","DOI":"10.17645\/mac.v1i1.70","article-title":"Understanding social media logic","volume":"1","author":"Poell","year":"2013","journal-title":"Media and Communication"},{"key":"ref_49","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"532","DOI":"10.1108\/CCIJ-03-2019-0031","article-title":"How do CEOs communicate on Twitter? A comparative study between Fortune 200 companies and top startup companies","volume":"24","author":"Yue","year":"2019","journal-title":"Corporate Communications: An International Journal"}],"container-title":["Behavioral Sciences"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2076-328X\/16\/9\/1607\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,9]],"date-time":"2026-09-09T12:58:15Z","timestamp":1788958695000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2076-328X\/16\/9\/1607"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,9]]},"references-count":49,"journal-issue":{"issue":"9","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,9]]}},"alternative-id":["bs16091607"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/bs16091607","relation":{},"ISSN":["2076-328X"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2076-328X","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,9]]}}}